A tale of two cities

Lucien de Guise is curator of the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia. You may write to him at luciendeguise@yahoo.com

LAST weekend I set off in search of Merdeka art festivities in London, and missed them by about two weeks.

Trafalgar Square had been the venue for an exhibition of Malaysian art put on by the National Art Gallery. In its place was the only evidence of Malaysia’s presence in the neighbourhood: the Jalur Gemilang flying jauntily in the face of an imminent Force 10 gale.

As Merdeka Day fell on a Sunday, the next thought was of shopping. England is catching up with Malaysia and the rest of Asia in this department. There was once a time when Sunday was an entirely non-commercial day in the UK. People were considered lucky to get a day off at all, and this was supposed to be used for church-going. Lack of shopping opportunities shaped England into a nation of D.I.Y. enthusiasts.

There are still relatively few mega-malls in England, but there is one area in which the newcomer outclasses Malaysia: museum shops.

On a typical London Sunday, the galleries and museums attract a good crowd, most of which will be in the shop.

This is a tradition that goes back a couple of decades, to a time when image-makers were trying to make art more accessible.

In the 1980s, Charles Saatchi’s advertising agency described the Victoria & Albert Museum as “an ace caffé with a nice museum attached”. Saatchi continues to change perceptions about art, but he will be emphasising the more serious side of his definitive new museum near Sloane Square when it opens next month.

Twenty years ago, the V&A advertising campaign upset a lot of purists. “Caffes” and shops were not meant to be the main attraction. Today, the forces of economic necessity have made them an essential revenue-earner for this sector of the tourism industry.

Even Queen Elizabeth is at it. Visitors to the Queen’s Gallery are tempted by the crown jewels of collectibles. There are bath towels with gold-embroidered monograms, and enough Union Jacks to kit out a jamboree for Britain’s most ardent white supremacists.

The area that the Queen’s Gallery needs to work on is books. This is where the other galleries have taken the lead, and visitors actually buy them. The range is astounding. At Tate Modern, the shop is the size of a football pitch and filled with books. It’s also crammed with people, and not all of them are adolescent males furtively inspecting the “photography” section. Online pornography has changed all that.

There are still some alarming books on display, mostly ignored by self-conscious shoppers. If any of these works entered Malaysia it would be a big day for the stationery company that sells black marker pens to the censorship office.

It is not only the massive galleries like Tate Modern and the British Museum that have a bewildering array of books. The Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park looks as if it might be a tea room. It’s a small place with a huge bookshop. More surprisingly, visitors actually make purchases. They avoid the voluntary contribution boxes.

Not every museum is entirely devoted to selling books. Product development has become a major source of creativity as well as revenue. Some of this is in better taste than others. The British Museum shop has a small metal box in the shape of an Egyptian sarcophagus. Inside is a miniature mummy made from white-chocolate bandages. There are no separate jars for the entrails, hearts or other organs that ancient morticians would pack separately for their rulers.

Museum shops are also equipped with merchandise that has been developed by leading contemporary artists. There was once a time when self-respecting anti-establishment figures would not allow their names to be associated with a T-shirt or fridge magnet. Now it is radical chic to get stuck right in. A lot of prominent names have participated, including the strange art combo that goes by the name of Gilbert and George. This staid-looking couple is a specialist in profanity, which is presumably why the team’s best-selling product is a swear box.

Taking museum sales to the next level are “exhibition shops”. These are located in the midst of an exhibition, offering visitors the chance to make a purchase while their blood is up.

Tate Modern favours this approach. Sales were especially high during last year’s Gilbert and George show, where, in addition to the swear box, there were cufflinks — perennial emblem of plutocracy. The message was milder than usual for this playful twosome. There was “Fear and Hope”, and “Life and Death”.

Cufflinks have also become more popular in Malaysia recently, although I have not yet encountered any developed by internationally acclaimed artists. Museum shops have retained their low profile. This is one part of the retail experience that has yet to be exploited.

This is one way to bring visitors into the world of art; the other is to tempt them with food. Here comes a challenge for readers. Can they name their top three favourite Malaysian museum restaurants? This is a tough one as, to my knowledge, there is only one.