It’s been a quiet week this week. I had two days off last week because I needed to use some carried over annual leave before the end of March and decided to use it in order to recover a bit from my friend’s 40th party and also to get a few things done around the house. It was lovely to have two chilled days to just potter about. I refurbished a plant pot to re-pot a houseplant, I went to the gym and I went through the cupboard under the stairs and all of my coats that live in there. Now I just need a day off to take stuff to the charity shop, vacuum pack my thick winter coats and to do some eBay listings. I also went to B&Q and bought new plants for our window boxes. Our windowsills are now looking Spring-fresh.
It seems that the change in season has also been marked by all of my magazines from the institutions where I am a member coming through the post. So, I thought I’d post about the London memberships that I have.
Kew Gardens
We have been members of Kew for years, since well before the pandemic. Although it’s over on the other side of London from us, we love visiting and do try and get there at least twice a year, generally in Autumn and Spring. We don’t always succeed but we love it and never mind paying the annual fee, even when we don’t quite get our money’s worth in any particular year, because we think it’s a great place and the conservation work they do is important.
What I’m not so much a fan of is the fact that they have now added in a Halloween trail to the Gardens in addition to the Winter Lights trail they have. I don’t mind the winter one because it’s not really the best season to see Kew in, but we love Autumn there and last time we went we found that the natural beauty of parts of the Gardens were spoilt by lighting cables and fake ghouls.
From May they have an exhibition of Henry Moore’s sculptures dotted throughout the Gardens and I’m looking forward to that. I like it when they exhibit art within the Gardens, like the Chihuly exhibition they did back in 2019.
Tate
This is a more recent membership for us. They were doing a cheap three month trial and had a few things on that I was interested in seeing, so I signed up.
I saw the Lee Miller exhibition at the Tate Britain and I really want to see the Tracey Emin exhibition at the Tate Modern. We saw an exhibition of her more recent work at the White Cube Gallery the other year and after seeing that I’m interested in seeing her earlier work. Having received the magazine, they also look like they have some great stuff coming up over the next year or so – Munch, Whistler, Kahlo. This might be one I need to keep.
V&A
Membership of the V&A is probably our most used membership because there have been so many exhibitions on that I have wanted to see. Even in the short time we have been members, we have seen the Elton John and David Furnish photography exhibition, the Cartier exhibition, and the Marie Antoinette style exhibition. Next on the list are the Schiaparelli exhibition and the Aardman exhibition at the Young V&A. The best thing about this membership is that so many of the V&A’s exhibitions end up selling out for at least the most popular times and this membership gets you in without having to worry about planning and booking way in advance.
Past memberships
In the past we have had a number of memberships. Often it makes more financial sense to pay for a membership than it does to pay for individual visits. So, for example, my mum wanted to go and see Westminster Abbey, it made more sense for me to buy a membership with a guest than it did to buy just two tickets as it meant that I could then visit with my husband and he could see it (it’s a place he hadn’t been before and it’s probably a place that you should visit in London at some point). So that worked out well as a one-year membership.
We have also had a cheap trial of the National Art Pass, which basically paid for itself with one visit (to the Cartoon Museum). We also got to visit the Courtauld Gallery for free with it (another place we hadn’t been), which definitely made it worth having at the time. At the time we decided not to upgrade to a full year’s membership but if there was stuff on that I wanted to see, it would definitely be one we would explore again.
We also get really reduced entry to the Tower of London and Tower Bridge by virtue of being Tower Hamlets residents, which feels a bit like a membership, even though it isn’t really.
