Death to Museums

In my continued search for sustainability for my independent museum, my eye was caught by a small article in the UK's quality paper of record (the Daily Mail). It confidently stated that Venezuela's (ex) President Hugo Chavez is to be preserved in a glass case in a museum.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2290032/Hugo-Chavezs-body-preserved-forever-displayed-inside-glass-tomb-museum.html

This revelation was closely followed by the death of our own beloved leader Margaret Thatcher. I feel it is no exaggeration to say that she was the only truly remarkably wonderfully wonderful Prime Minister the UK has ever had (which reminds me - I wonder why I never got that job at the National Mining Museum, or the National Museum of Scotland, or the People's Museum in Manchester).

The missed opportunity for the struggling Grantham Museum to have Mrs. T. lie in state was forgivable as we do not yet have a tradition of pickling our leaders for public consumption. For the sake of museum sustainability THIS HAS TO CHANGE.

We can start with leaders. I don't suppose the Cromwell Museum in Huntingdon will want the former Prime Minister John Major, but the Farmland Museum and Denny Abbey isn't far away from his constituency. I suggest they send a letter to Mr. Major before before too long asking that he donate his body to the museum. I think a firm promise that he won't form part of the handling collection will be important. But as we as a profession move from glass cases to 'fun interactive experiences' we may need bodies to fill up the redundant receptacles.

Once the precedent has been set
Tony Blair can gently rot in the Peace Museum in Bradford.
Gordon Brown can inflict his deathly smile in the Museum of Economics in Mexico City.
David Cameron may find a spot in the Museum of Hell in Singapore
Nick Clegg perhaps will fit nicely into the Silly Museum in Slovenia.
Feel free to suggestion where Ed Milliband might go when he dies (or would anyone notice?)

It is but a short and unreasonable step for museums to become the home for dead scientists and celebrities (although trying to find an elderly male celebrity that isn't a suspected paedophile is a tricky task nowadays). Surely the Natural History Museum has got to get David Attenborough, The Science Museum should get Stephen Hawking, The V&A Victoria Beckham and Albert Finney?

Someone has got to get the process started so the Museum of Unreason will be formally writing to  Mel Gibson and Britney Spears as the highest profile personalities that would fit into our display ethos. I'm sure I can keep them in the freezer at home until I get the lottery funding for our new Gallery of Unreason. This will give our little museum an instant international profile. Just think of the secondary spend on 'They may take our knives,  but they'll never take our teaspoons' Braveheart souvenir tea towels (at least that was what I heard when watching the film during a severe bout of tinnitus). or  "Hit me baby one more time' boxing gloves in his and her sizes.

So when people ask me what is the future of museums? I say death.