Tricks and Treats at the British Museum’s Halloween

Bears and a tree spirit guarding the Monster Ceilidh Band in the Great Court
Back in June the British Museum announced its first “Members' Late” event, promising an opportunity to discover Halloween's wild Celtic ancestor – Samhain (pronounced ‘sow-in’). Unfortunately, some of the treats turned out to be tricks for most of the attendees…

I’m a great fan of museums and galleries and thought this would be a great alternative to sitting at home, not answering the door to small children expecting sweets from strangers. Thus, we arrived at the museum just before the allotted time to find a queue of about 500 people waiting in the damp London chill to get into the museum. Someone hadn’t really thought the mathematics through.

By the time the last of the queue got in and shed their coats and grabbed their drinks vouchers (it took an hour bring in 500 people), some of the events had already started. What was worse; the really interesting events that involved torch-lit tours of the museum with curators and other staff were limited – one was limited to 60 people across the evening. 12% of the attendees!

Nereids (sea nymphs)

This failure in planning put a tarnish on what was otherwise an enjoyable evening. There was a room for carving turnips; another for sketching nudes in elaborate headdresses; another for a drum circle which had more chairs than drums (eh?), and other activities scattered around.

Turnips in the Ruins

Janet and I did have a lovely time perusing the bits of the museum which were open to wandering. To have so few people around was indeed a treat. There was even a treasure-hunt quiz to send you looking for flying skeletons and giant beetles. Of course, it was made harder by being given a map printed grey on black in a building with lights turned off! Along the way we rediscovered bits of the museum we’d not visited in years, so that was immense fun. And not all the lights were off, as you can see from the photos. One room we’d never been in before is dedicated to the origins of the museum, when it was a loose affiliation of Victorian antiquarians who codified their amateur treasure hunts into the field of archaeology. In amongst them were people like John Dee: self-proclaimed magician and shameless self-promoter.

Mercury rising in the orrery (dated 1704)

All in all a nice evening, but not the immersive experience we were expecting. But it’s still one of the great museums of the world and I’ll forgive it teething problems on a first attempt at an event like this if the exhibitions continue to be as good as ever.

The Gayer Anderson Cat oversees the Egypt Room (600 BC)