Tomorrow (Saturday, October 18) George Osborne and Dr Nicholas Cullinan will welcome the great and the good to the British Museum for a party.
The 800-person jamboree and silent auction— tickets at £2,000 apiece — is being billed as London’s answer to the Met Gala, the annual fundraiser for the New York Costume Institute in the USA and reigning champion of red-carpet events. Appearances from Naomi Campbell, Dame Kristin Scott Thomas and Sir Grayson Perry are confirmed. Whether the party has the same impact as the Met’s remains to be seen.
The ball comes at an interesting time for the capital, with London Fashion Week, Frieze and the BFI festival recently prompting the city’s leading voices to defend its merit as a cultural powerhouse. Laura Weir, chair of the British Fashion Council, and Tristram Hunt, director of the V&A Museum, told different news outlets that London was ‘still’ a Mecca for movers and shakers, a place that truly ‘matters’ and where shows of creativity are ‘more important than ever’.
All this is true, of course, although banging on about it sends quite the wrong message. The British Museum, for its part, has an unfortunate habit of landing in hot water. The 2023 announcement that roughly 2,000 artefacts had been stolen, coupled with ongoing debate around the repatriation of the Elgin Marbles and a cosy relationship with BP, has cast a shadow over its once-lofty reputation. Now, the museum has announced that it needs £1 billion to redevelop its entrances, build a new storage facility and improve the management of its permanent collection. Could a party be just the ticket?
Britain does not share America’s affection for patronage and philanthropy, but it should. Relying on government funding at a time of economic uncertainty is futile and, as demonstrated even in countries as sinistral as France, donations by the wealthy in exchange for clout and the renaming of a gallery wing go a long way. The British Museum Ball is a fundraiser, but also a strategic event, a show of soft power amid a culture that seems intent on telling everyone how great Britain is. Let’s show them instead.
As ever with such an event, a larger question looms over the capital’s relationship to the rest of the country. In the Met Gala’s case — buoyed by the unbound nature of the internet — the party has grown far beyond the city it immediately serves. Raising funds for the Costume Institute is one thing, but, for the brands dressing the stars who attend, the value generated through media exposure runs into the billions. American labels, such as Thom Browne and Marc Jacobs, consistently rank among the top choices for guests. There is hope that Burberry, JW Anderson, Vivienne Westwood and others could replicate this success over here in the long term. Party on.
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