An Exhibition Not Seen

I was really looking forward to the National Gallery’s latest blockbuster exhibition Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers. The gallery website claimed I would be ‘blown away by Van Gogh’s most spectacular paintings in this once-in-a-century exhibition’ and encouraged me to ‘see the work up-close’. Unfortunately, I was blown away by the hordes of people in front of every piece in the exhibition and I barely achieved a distant or partial view. This was the worst exhibition experience I’ve ever had. There had been a lot of hype so I knew it would be busy but with timed tickets (which were ridiculously expensive) I was expecting to be able to see the paintings and enjoy wandering through the galleries. In reality, my visit was an exhausting battle against milling crowds and long queues. There were queues to get through security, queues in the restaurant, queues in the bookshop and queues for the loos. Miraculously, there wasn’t a queue to actually go into the exhibition but the first room was so crowded it felt like being on the Underground in rush hour. All the paintings were hidden from view so I waited for a while, thinking people would eventually move along, giving me a chance to view the pictures. But they didn’t move along so I went to the next room, hoping there would be less of a scrum – but no, exactly the same: people, people and more people, obscuring every picture, and it was the same in each of the main galleries. People taking photos with their phones was the most infuriating thing: they planted themselves in front of the paintings, raised their phones and took photo after photo, oblivious of other people who wanted to experience the paintings with their own eyes. The only space in the exhibition was in a side room where Van Gogh’s brilliant pen and ink drawings were on show so I managed to see something at last. Back in the main galleries, as more and more people piled in, my energy levels dwindled and I decided to fight my way out through the shop. I had hoped to buy a catalogue as a substitute for seeing the actual exhibition but I was in no mood to pay the required £35. It was dusk by the time I left and there was still a long queue of people outside the gallery, buzzing with excitement about what they were going to see. I mentally wished them good luck and made my way to a café for a much-needed sit down and a cup of tea.