Ripoff at the Royal Academy - Byzantium

  Its not often that I rant, but my experience at the Royal Academy today was a real disaster. Avoid the new show Byzantium and keep your money in your pocket.

First, the show costs £10 to get in and was grossly overcrowded on a thursday morning. There were so many people that you had to barge your way in to see many of the exhibits. It didn't help that a high proportion of people were using the obnoxious headphones, the ones where you have to have the volume up high enough to be an irritation, but not high enough that you can actually benefit from hearing what is being said. I think having the audio commentary slows down the viewing process and distracts people.

Second, the show is incredibly badly laid out and lit. Dark, dingy, diabolical are some of the words that come to mind. The flow of people around the exhibits seems very poor with lots of bottlenecks where people get stuck in corners. The cases are so big that you can't get close to what are some very small objects. Some beautiful gold coins are absolutely wasted. You can't see any details whatsoever and the poor quality englarged pictures beside them are gross. There are bits of "furniture" to evoke church or home scattered in the middle of the floor that do nothing whatsoever to enhance the experience. There is one row of household items in a long line where instead of spreading the items and their descriptions so they can be seen from both sides, you are virtually forced down one side of the line. Much of the gold and tempura paintings are dull and lifeless. In the rare examples where they are well lit, it is almost impossible to stand and look at the items without casting a shadow on them because the lights are behind you.

Third, the show just doesn't hang together. There is very little sense of chronology in the show with you jumping geography and timeperiods from room to room. Even where the items are grouped thematically it is tough to see progress or difference between the items. There are some magnificent items here, but they are lost in the clutter. And I don't really know what to say about Byzantium after having been to the show.

If there is a redeeming feature it is the last room where some fantastic pieces from the Monastery of St Catherine of Sinai sing out through the dark and the gloom. At the end of a tedious trudge through the crowds, I almost missed how gorgeous they are. If I had been one of the people on the first days who missed them because they had trouble getting to the UK I would have been severely disappointed. They are the highlight of the show. And the shock of going out into the brightly lit gift shop at the end is truly jarring. The new temple of mammon, brightly lit, with cash registers ringing, and better looking copies than the original.

Don't bother going to the show. If you want to spend money, go buy the extortionally expensive book which at least shows off the pieces in all their original colour and glory. Better still, just drop in and spend 30 minutes flicking through a copy in the gift shop. Probably less crowded, certainly better value, and a much better representation of Byzantium. The Royal Academy probably won't care. They are getting plenty of people through the door and willing to be ripped off.

Comments

[andrew mashkov]

This review almost entirely echoes my own thoughts. Quite frankly, the RA should be ashamed of the layout, the labelling and the failure to light properly. It was reminiscent of dull, badly thought-out museum exhibition styles of many decades ago. That said, there are some absolutely exquisite items in the show - so I probably would not agree to give the exhibition a miss - but WHAT a wasted opportunity! During my visit (thankfully not too crowded) all the problems referred to above were evident - and, most surprisingly, some other visitors also grumbled to me about these things! That has never happened before, and shows how widely these feelings must have been felt.
If the curator who 'designed' the exhibition works for the RA, I think serious consideration should be given to limiting their involvement in future exhibition planning.
My companion and I decided that the exhibition would have been improved by having fewer exhibits more carefully arranged, lit and labelled. This really was an 'embarrassment of riches'.
Go, by all means, but please do not let the obvious limitations of the exhibition put you off learning about the splenours of this ancient culture and empire.