Introducing...Museum Rat

Exhibitions as seen through the lens of an artist

An insider look into museums & exhibitions.

I used to buy tickets to museums and leave them hidden around the city as scavenger hunts - because art should be for everyone, not just those who can afford the entry. Maybe this space is my grown-up version of that: a small, slightly mischievous way of opening the door, so that anyone curious enough can come inside.

I’ve always gone to exhibitions in a dozen different disguises. Sometimes as a tourist. Sometimes as a thief of ideas. Sometimes hazy on a rainy day, drifting into a dream. Sometimes jealous. Sometimes defensive. Sometimes hungry for answers, sometimes leaving with only more questions.

For years I kept those encounters to myself. Partly because the word “art critic” scared me. I still remember walking up to the Royal Academy as a teenager, rucksack slung over my black hoodie, only to be turned away after realising I couldn’t afford the ticket. Critics, I thought then, were the people on the other side of the rope, the gatekeepers.

But now, after years of painting, writing, and circling this beast we call the art world - loving it, hating it, but never able to stay away - I see things differently. I look at exhibitions curiously, like a rat in the rafters. I wonder how institutions balance being the “forefront of culture” with filling the blockbuster queues. I wonder how it feels for the eighty year old artist who was ignored all their life, suddenly swept into the blue-chip spotlight pedestaled as proof that you can “make it at any age.” Is that vindication, or a bittersweet reminder that the world was simply slow?

I think about the set designs - my architecture training will always haunt me. I think about music, about light, about the way people’s shoes squeak on museum floors and when and where phones come out to take pictures. Mostly, I just like to be there. To see. To listen. To notice.

So here begins the Museum Rat Diaries. A weekly dispatch, part tongue-in-cheek, part survival guide, part love letter to the strange rooms we gather in to look at art.

Take a look at the first entry here: