In The Museum
The “Noli Me Tangere” soundwalk takes place in the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery. The Museum is part of the complex of Royal Pavilion buildings and gardens constructed for the Prince of Wales as the eighteenth turned into the nineteenth century. Initially a thing of space and distance, with room for horses to gallop, the intervening years have seen the town close around the Museum and the Pavilion, with roads squeezing close and indifferent representatives of different architectural periods edging in.
As my children were growing up, I used to push each of them around the museum in their respective prams. My son liked the 1970s design of the leather Joe chair, formed in the shape of a baseball glove. I’ve just asked my daughter what was her favourite part of the Museum and she said it was “that fashion bit on the second floor.” They both liked the Punch and Judy booth.
The Museum’s contents are in many ways just as impressive as the building in which they are housed. Organised around the large central space that rises up for two complete floors to a curved ceiling are a variety of galleries, each with their own distinctive character. From the museum map, the captions given to each room offers a sense of the collections: Ancient Egypt, Local History, World Art, 20th Century Art and Design, Mr. Willett’s Popular Pottery, Brighton History Centre, Performance, Body, Fashion and Style, Art Galleries and Exhibitions.
The whole feels pretty much right: the right balance between new-fangled interactive displays and the established conventions of lit and shelved cabinets; the right mixture of local focus with the acknowledgement of wider horizons; the right inter-play between permanent exhibits and temporary or touring shows. As my daughter said, “that fashion bit” is very impressive, particularly in its negotiation of the intricate connections between styles of vernacular clothing (primarily donations of full outfits from local inhabitants) and more recognisably designed dress. But this pitch is a personal one, reflecting little more than my own interests. Other areas have their own excitements. It is one of the great luxuries offered by a local museum that those who live here have the opportunity to return again and again, noticing something for the first time or finding, with the passage of time, something different in what had become familiar.
Of course, when you are visiting somewhere with a specific purpose, as I began to in the Spring while scouting out possible routes for this strange audio guide, things shift again.



