Third time lucky – today I finally made it into the Hadrian exhibition. When I’d previously popped in to try to see it, I’d gone on Saturday afternoons when all the tickets for the day had already been sold.
I tried to book online for today, but no luck, so I pitched up early to buy tickets in person. I still had to wait an hour and a half before I could get in, but that’s not a problem when you’re in one of the world’s great museums.
What I hadn’t quite realised was that Statuephilia was also on at the museum. This is a collection of five “sculptures” by contemporary artists, placed amongst the museum’s other exhibits.

They’re quite fascinating – and I decided to take photos of them. Well easier said than done. With four of the five, you can take as many snaps as you like – indeed with a few exceptions, you’re free to photograph away inside the museum. The Hadrian exhibition didn’t allow it, and although I suspect that the reason was partly to ensure that they sold plenty of £25 catalogues, it was very full and taking photos tends to get in the way of the exhibits for other people.
Taking photos of the exhibits in Statuephilia was also fine for most of the exhibits as I say, but there was one for which photography was expressly forbidden. That, of course, was Damian Hurst’s piece. Now as it happens, I did take a photo of his piece. It’s not very good, and it was before I read the sign banning it.
I’ve noticed that it’s quite common for Hirst to ban taking photos of his pieces. I was in the Metropolitan Museum in New York last year where he has one of his sharks on display. Once again, the museum was happy for you take photos, but his piece banned it.

Perhaps my feelings on the subject aren’t too different from those of some others. The skulls on display at The British Museum really aren’t anything to write home about and certainly aren’t as clever and involving as Tim Noble and Sue Webster’s Dark Stuff which was given plentiful approval from those who I saw it with. The relative merits of the vaguely obscene gold statue of Kate Moss are also in the balance, but it’s undoubtedly the most popular piece from the unscientific survey I made today. People were taking photos from every angle. The Hirst piece simply had a woman with her daughter sitting on the floor sketching it, which I assume doesn’t break the rules.