Leicester City wins the Premier League, Richard III is found in a car park and the X Factor winner didn't get the Christmas number 1 this year. Weird things occasionally happen.
Arguably the most unexpected occurrence recently was the election of a wealthy reality TV star in the USA. Given that he seems to be making a bit of a hash of it, he might leave his post early. He may even be run out of the country by an angry mob. If this did happen where will he go? As he told the great Piers Piers Morgan himself,
“I love Scotland. One of the biggest problems I have in winning, I won’t be able to get back there so often. I would love to go there. As you know, before this happened, I would be there a lot."So once there he needs to have a hobby, I confidently predict he will establish his Trump Museum purely out of revenge for the Guggenheim having refused to lend him a Van Gogh. But given the slightly scattershot nature to his bilious vendettas he will get his own back on us.
“If someone attacks you, do not hesitate. Go for the jugular.”My guess, he will go for the most ancient and august museum body in Britain...the Museums Association. There is a director at the moment, the fine and distinctly northern Sharon Heal. She would clearly make a better President of the USA than Donald, let alone of the Museums Association. But she has a fatal flaw. She lacks a strong connection to the Russian mafia. Thus, a bit of fake news here, a little vote rigging there, and 'lock her up' chants will be ringing around Clerkenwell Close before you can say museums change lives.
So what is Donald Trump's perspective on museums. The clever money suggests he doesn't know what one is let alone visited one. Therefore we can expect fresh thinking and fresh action.
Will he learn about museums? He will do so, and very quickly, if his confidence about getting to grips with missiles was not misplaced.
“It would take an hour and a half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles. … I think I know most of it anyway.”He will be confident. When the MA lobbies government,
"We're going to have so many victories, you will be bored of winning."In his Art of the Deal, he may have already come painfully close to the truth about museums
"You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don't deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on."Also,
"You need energy.In [museums]*, you need energy as well as brains. Brains is always number one, but you need energy."This is all potentially positive, but I suspect his support for museums may come at a price.
"I'm interested in protecting none of them unless they pay"So you can expect your MA membership subscription will go up somewhat alarmingly.
Also we may be faced with:
- A big, beautiful new museum that Mexico will pay for
- 50,000 new jobs in the National Mining Museum
- A ban on Muslims entering all museums
- Arming 20% of curators
- Tariffs on object loans from overseas museums
- The claim that the Eden Project is a Chinese hoax
- The next MA conference to be held at Mar-a-Lago
lets hope DT manages to make America great again.
*authors addition - replacing 'life'
