WORLD Friendship Day, also known as International Day of Friendship, was recently celebrated. I'm not quite sure what is meant to happen at this time of the year but it surely won't entail a rush to buy museum friendships.
Museums in other parts of the world are making a big push on bringing in members, or "friends" as they are commonly known. Although being a friend sounds less commercial, it still costs money.
As an example, joining the inner circle of the Metropolitan Museum in New York can set art enthusiasts back up to US$15,000. At this price, there is the excitement of joining many others in getting a mention in the annual report.
To ensure you mingle with those who might share your interests in becoming actual friends, the Met offers more categories than most museums. I was pleased to see there is an Islamic Art friendship group. If only I were under 40, the price would be reduced by about 80 per cent.
The United States is the undoubted champion of museum friendships — it is even tax friendly. There are lots of possibilities for deductions, which should appeal to that spirit of enterprise on which the US was founded.
They have extended their networking overseas, which means that the most publicised membership of the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, is to become an American Friend of the Louvre. To do this in style, the true international operator might want to invest in a category known as the International Council.
The cost is US$25,000, but as Paris is the city of love, this price buys a romantic membership for two. It will buy all sorts of opportunities; perhaps the least interesting of these is a five per cent discount in Louvre shops. Once again there are huge discounts for young people, and their definition of young is about as generous as Malaysia's. I think 40 is still the limit set by Umno Youth.
HOT TICKET
The challenge in the West is to get younger people into museums. In Malaysia, it's getting anybody into a museum! Now that the Enhanced Movement Control Order is over, will we see more interest in such excursions? Is a trip to the museum at the top of countless wish lists? It was in Europe and America.
Most surprisingly, it is expensive exhibitions rather than free-entry general admissions that the rakyat are clamouring for in those other parts of the world. In a country like the United Kingdom, which has so many museums that cost nothing to enter, the queues seem to form outside shows such as a past-its-original-sell-by-date exhibition on Saint Thomas Becket, although there is the wider appeal of an exhibition about handbags. Well, a few other bags too, but mainly handbags. This is a blockbuster at the Victoria and Albert Museum for which tickets are just about unobtainable.
It's possible that the exhibitions are all booked up because the friends/members of the relevant museums are determined to get good value out of their hefty investment. During the different lockdowns, it must have been especially painful to be denied a chance to visit a museum, let alone enjoy cocktails with the curators.
Networking on Zoom is not half as much fun as hanging out under the skeleton of a diplodocus dinosaur or one of those Batman-style soirees where priceless paintings sit alongside tables of canapés.
So, the friends are partly squeezing out those with less of a stake. Even if they hate handbags, they must be getting first dibs on the tickets. This might explain why museum friendship schemes in Malaysia are not a hot ticket: there isn't enough interest in the exhibitions to justify splashing out for a whole year of something that isn't in much demand. Many of the visitors are tourists anyway, and they definitely wouldn't want to invest, unless they are Americans with a Louvre obsession.
Meanwhile, south of the Causeway, it's another world. In Singapore, there is something called Friends of the Museums, which doesn't limit itself to any one museum. Nor is it about paying to get onto the inside track.
This scheme is actually about volunteering. When the promotional material uses the word "enrich", it doesn't mean the opportunity to network some insider trading; it's about such worthiness as study groups and field trips. Could this be the way for Malaysia to go? It is pretty much a blank slate at the moment.
Just in case any readers feel like taking the Western path to a costly friendship, I've compiled a table that shows the price spectrum of overseas institutions. Readers might appreciate the options that will eventually reopen in Malaysia and shop local instead.
(Annual rates with approximate conversion into Ringgit Malaysia)
Follow Lucien de Guise at Instagram @crossxcultural.
COST OF FRIENDSHIP AROUND THE WORLD
From simple membership to inner circle
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney: RM300 to RM15,000,000 (over a lifetime!)
Asian Art Museum, San Francisco: RM450 to RM400,000
British Museum, London: RM150 to RM60,000
Louvre Museum, Paris: RM75 (for the very young) to RM25,000 (for a couple)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: RM400 to RM100,000
Museum of Modern Art, New York: RM280 to RM100,000
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam: RM250 to RM5,000
State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg: RM400 to RM8,000
Victoria and Albert Museum, London: RM400 to RM40,000
(The absence of museums in Asia reflects the emphasis placed on paid friendship programmes).