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LONDON (Reuters) - All of Britain`s major museums and galleries are to be open free of charge from December, the government has said.

Ministers have paved the way for a multimillion pound windfall for museums by drawing up new rules allowing them to reclaim value-added tax relief -- thus removing an incentive for them to charge visitors.

"Free access to our national museums and galleries is one of the 25 steps to a better Britain that the government has promised to deliver," Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell said on Thursday.

"As part of our commitment to strengthen the role of the arts in our national life, we want everyone to be able to enjoy the great collections in our national museums and galleries for free," she said in a statement.

Museums such as the Victoria & Albert, the Imperial War Museum and the National Maritime Museum which currently charge entrance fees are expected to waive the fees as early as December.

Other major attractions such as the National Gallery and the British Museum are already free. They will also benefit from the change to the VAT rules by being able to claim a refund. About time, too!

― DG, Thursday, 9 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

That's hardly good news to me, NYC museums are still bastard expensive, except for certain nights of the week when they are free.

They should make the zoo free.

― Ally, Thursday, 9 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Museums: DUD. There I said it. It's full of people who give me the evil look when I giggle at a Mapplethorpe picture or when I comment on the ugliness of Emin's arty farty knickers. Museums should not be *holy*, you should TALK REALLY LOUD, voice your opinion. Even if it's not based on research.

― nathalie, Thursday, 9 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Great News. I always spend to much at galleries.

― anthony, Thursday, 9 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I totally agree! Museums are too arty, you should be able to have a good time there. I mean, why not? It's not like by saying that you think something is whatever you are disturbing anyone else's time, right?

― Ally, Thursday, 9 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

How does the presence of snooty, annoyed people make museums too arty? There are snooty, annoyed people at the grocery store. Pop art! Shut up, me.

― Cryosmurf, Thursday, 9 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Because that's all there is at museums, it seems. Quiet, snooty, dare I say it? PRETENTIOUS people. Or people pretending to be pretentious, which is even worse. I'm all for going to museums, but only if I'm allowed to shout, "That's god awful, I could do that too" at things at MoMA. It's of course nothing against the museum itself, they are fine things.

― Ally, Thursday, 9 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Do you have to shout it?

― Josh, Thursday, 9 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Well I want everyone to know what I think.

― Ally, Thursday, 9 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

You do when they are wearing those stupid headphones.

― nathalie, Thursday, 9 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I am a chattering mass at a good musem. I run and sigh . They are my plasure cages. When an endowment biddy tells me to be quiet , i tell i have been i nschool longer then she has been alive. This is not trye however.

― anthony, Thursday, 9 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Usually tell them I am an undercover FBI agent who is in the search of old bags who like to pretend they are smart. Then I yell: "YOU HAVE JUST BEEN BUSTED! On the floor and spread'em." Then I like to cuddle them and whisper "Can you be my granny?"

― nathalie, Thursday, 9 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Nathalie, that's brilliant, the funniest thing I'd heard today.

Free museums = fab. It means more people will go, a better mix of people means a less intimidating artworld. I hope everyone who does make the journey will find something that blows their mind.

― suzy, Thursday, 9 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Let's hear it for talking in galleries!

Hey you stiffs, take your liminal experience and shove it up your ass!

― jamesmichaelward, Thursday, 9 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

My mum and I have actually been thrown out of an art gallery (The Cloisters in NYC) for getting too excited by the art. My mum was enthusing about the use of perspective in the Campin Altarpiece, and gesticulating wildly at the canvas, setting off alarms and causing the over-anxious security guard to bark "PLEASE STEP AWAY FROM THE ART!!!!"

Which has been my favourite phrase for years now...

― Kate the Saint, Thursday, 9 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Actually I wonder... Would it be considered a crime if you peed on a Warhol artwork?

― nathalie, Thursday, 9 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

This thread appears to have been turned upside down. I am confused.

― DG, Thursday, 9 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Someone pissed on Duchamp's urinal, I believe. A couple of chinese art terrorists who do mad stuff in london. Also, I believe Warhol once had a project whereby all his friends would piss on a canvas. An idea he later came to regret as the room forever stank of piss.

― matthew james, Thursday, 9 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Someone pissed on Duchamp's urinal, I believe. A couple of chinese art terrorists who do mad stuff in london.

I believe the names sewn into the back of their PE kits are Yuan Cai and JJ Xi. Apparantly when they did it, all the other people there assumed it was some performance organised by the Tate and everyone applauded. "Good pissing - well done!"

They also jumped up and down on Tracy Emin's bed. They got arrested for doing that. But they were released without charge because that nice Tracy Emin didn't want to press charges.

― jamesmichaelward, Thursday, 9 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

In the mid 1930s the origonal Urinal was destroyed or lost.
With the advent of pop in the mid 60s Duchamp made a couple of repos.
One of them in London and One of them in cleavend . Both of them were pissed in. One by Art Student and one by dissident Chinese.

To learn more there is a great book by a woman named Gould from Yale. My memory is shot.

― anthony, Thursday, 9 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Is there anything more stupid than people caring about whether a conceptual artwork is an original or a reproduction?

― Nick, Friday, 10 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The urinal wasn't concept art. It was *very pretty*. Best use of museum? Steve Martin rollerskating through. Second best use? Filming orwell fliks. Third best use? Displaying pretty things.

― Sterling Clover, Friday, 10 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I find the idea amusing as well. Duchamp wrote and spoke extensivy against the prettines of his work
Never ask an Art Historian his opinon, they are worse then Soccer fans.

― anthony, Friday, 10 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

B.Eno claimz he pissed in it too. But I think he's just *saying* it. Obv.this = bettah than actually doing it, artwise.

― mark s, Friday, 10 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Surely saying that Fountain isn't conceptual and it's very pretty is missing the point. Duchamp didn't select it because it was pretty. He didn't find it pretty. He didn't find it ugly either. He was completely indifferent to it. That was his point. Total aesthetic indifference. He wasn't into all this stuff about how the everyday and the mundane is beautiful (which is why he disapproved of pop art "I threw the urinal and the bottlerack at them...")

And the reason that it's worth pointing out that the urinal is a reproduction is the idiot lenghths they went to, to ensure the reproduction looked 'realistic' - ie hiring top sculptures to produce it at great expense, when the original had been bought from from (I think) a junkyard.

― jamesmichaelward, Friday, 10 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Antony's right that art historians are "worse than soccer fans."

― Tim, Friday, 10 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

What about soccer-loving art historians. ;-)

Seriously, why are they bad?

― nathalie (nathalie), Friday, 10 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Art historians are bad in my experience because they are impossibly pretty posh girls at university who were probably a nightmare but made my life hell from a distance. Soccer loving art historians = does not compute in the above conception. No pretty girls love football except Gabby Yorath. Great GY quote from this week:

"I have to be careful in pubs and things like that. I don't like to talk about football when I'm out with a big group of blokes because it can upset the women. I don't like to make those women who don't care about football feel like, oh, look at her coming here with football stories."

― Nick, Friday, 10 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I've never been impressed by a woman's football story. Which is a shame.

― Martin, Friday, 10 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I've never been impressed by a football story. Which I can live with.

― Nick, Friday, 10 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I'm not going to impressed by anything else until next May or so.

Nathalie, art historians are not bad, they are just not as good as football fans.

― Tim, Friday, 10 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

*head falls on keyboard*

joejeojeojdeohjdoehdeodeohddcudgc

― nathalie (nathalie), Friday, 10 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I mean most art historians are violently obssesive about hteir obsessions.

― anthony, Friday, 10 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Actually, I agree with the football fan comparison. Apparantly, in the pub the other night, a fight broke out between two rival groups of art historians. One group were claiming that painting was still too obsessed with pleasing the retina where as it should be more concerned with pleasing the intellect and the other group were claiming it had gone too far and that the hand and eye still had an important role to play in art*

*This story might not be true.

― jamesmichaelward, Friday, 10 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

eleven years pass...

Revive!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10333211

Puppy thrown at German biker gang
A German student "mooned" a group of Hell's Angels and hurled a puppy at them before escaping on a stolen bulldozer, police have said.
The man drove up to a Hell's Angels clubhouse near Munich, wearing only a pair of shorts and carrying a puppy.
He dropped his shorts and threw the dog, escaping on a bulldozer from a nearby building site.
He was arrested later at home by police. The 26-year-old is said to have stopped taking depression medication.
After making his getaway on the bulldozer, he had driven so slowly that a 5km tailback built up behind him on the motorway.
After driving about 1km, he had abandoned the bulldozer in the middle of the motorway, near Allershausen. He continued his journey by hitchhiking.
"What motivated him to throw a puppy at the Hell's Angels is currently unclear," a police spokesman said.
The puppy is now being cared for in an animal shelter.

― Neil S, Monday, 14 January 2013 11:11 (thirteen years ago)

sadly that story's a couple of years old by the looks of it

want to know what happened to the puppy

― non-elitist melted poo (Noodle Vague), Monday, 14 January 2013 11:13 (thirteen years ago)

hah yeah sorry. Me too, hopefully the little guy made it out of the shelter.

― Neil S, Monday, 14 January 2013 11:15 (thirteen years ago)

it's number 2 on the Beeb's most-read list tho. has it been Reddited or Metafiltered or somethink?

― non-elitist melted poo (Noodle Vague), Monday, 14 January 2013 11:16 (thirteen years ago)

I picked it up on Twitter, so it might have been trending there.

― Neil S, Monday, 14 January 2013 11:18 (thirteen years ago)

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