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Treasure Palaces edited by Maggie Fergusson

 One of the joys of the Bargain Book Table is coming across something you might never normally have noticed, but that turns out to be joyous. As I’ve said elsewhere, books are all about risk and reward and oh boy, with Treasure Palaces edited by Maggie Fergusson it was all about the reward.

Treasure Palaces is subtitled ‘Great Writers Visit Great Museums’ and the book does what it says on the tin (with bells on…) It’s a collection of 24 essays by eminent writers about their favourite museums and it started life as a series of pieces in Intelligent Life, the sister magazine to The Economist, with the premise that a writer (who isn’t an art critic) would return to a museum that had played a part in their life and write about any aspect of it – the building, the collection, the originator – while weaving in elements of personal memoir. The original magazine collection ran to 38 essays and I can honestly say that the only thing I’m disappointed about with this book is that they had to choose only 24 of the essays, because if the ones in the book are indicative of the general standard I could quite easily have read them all.

The title of the book is deceptive. I really like the ‘Treasure’ part of it because it sums the magic box element of museums, especially small museums where every exhibit is a voyage of discovery and there’s the possibility of a new treasure to be uncovered around every corner. Then there is the ‘Palace’ element because many of the great national museums are like palaces – amazing and sometimes intimidating buildings where exhibits are locked away in glass cases – national treasures to be venerated from a suitable distance. On the other hand, other museums, again especially local museums can be the opposite of the traditional idea of palaces but still be places of wonder, telling the intimate stories of towns, communities, or families. What I really liked about this book and its personal essay format is that there is a healthy combination of all these elements.

A few examples show the range of essays. Roddy Doyle talks about how he loves the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York because  people lived there – not anyone famous, but actual people,  and I loved him talking about why the wallpaper is important. John Lanchester recounts discovering The Prado in Madrid as a 19-year-old in his gap year – seeing art by Bosch and Bruegel for the first time and what it felt like to revisit the museum over 30 years later.  Aminatta Forma talks about the origins of the wonderfully named The Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb. I especially loved the story of the biker boots display – the boots were bought for a girl called Ana and even though many girls have worn them over the years they will always be Ana’s boots. Don Patterson talks about the stillness and silence you can find in The Frick Collection in the middle of the New York madness, Margaret Drabble wallows in the Museo Dell’Opificio Delle Pietre Dure – the museum of semi-precious stones in Florence, a gem (pardon the pun) less visited and less well known than some of the city’s other artistic attractions. Andrew Motion waxes lyrical about the Sir John Ritblat Treasures Gallery in the British Museum and I was especially taken by his description of the manuscript room housing everything from Beatles songs to fragments of Psalms, reminding us that all creation starts with a blank page and the first tentative words. Then there’s Michael Morpurgo, writer of War Horse making pilgrimage to the In Flanders Field Museum in Ypres – he has the words that I don’t have for that museum. And finally, being a good Scot I also have to mention Andrew O’Hagen’s essay on Glasgow’s Palace of Dreams,  Kelvingrove, which I’m ashamed to say I’ve never visited, which I’m guessing makes me a very bad Scot.

I could go on and on because all the essays have their enchantment whether it’s about ABBA: The Museum in Stockholm, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne or walking in Wordsworth’s footsteps at Dove Cottage in Grasmere.

Treasure Palaces is a book I know I’ll go back and dip into again. It’s a slim volume that covers a lot of ground geographically, artistically and personally for the writers and having seen the museums through the eyes of the various writers, I really want to go visit them all and make my own memories. The joy of museums is that they belong to each person who visits and each of us take away our own impressions and emotions and Treasure Palaces does a wonderful job of exploring how this happens.

Treasure Palaces edited by Maggie Fergusson was first published in 2016 and my copy is published by PublicAffairs, New York.

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