Maybe this is my intellectual snobbery talking again, but is anyone else disturbed by the news that a DaVinci Code-inspired television game show is being shot in the British Museum? Particularly odious was the following quote from this article:
The show was devised by Justin Scroggie, who was behind Treasure Hunt and loves museums, but the idea came from the very different reactions of Roy Ackerman, the executive producer, who claims he hated museums. “I just felt these were the junk shops of the ancient world … this series is trying to see if we can push the buttons of an audience who couldn’t normally be dragged across the threshold of a museum.”
The junk shops of the ancient world. How charming. Presumably, following this logic, if museums were more like Tesco Superstores or Wal-Mart, they’d be more popular. Popular with whom, I shudder to think.