Dancing festivals may not seem the most normal place to start increasing your vocabulary, but believe it or not, it was during one of these long drawn out affairs, whilst sitting in pink church in Blackpool in costume with full stage make up waiting to go on stage that I learnt a thing or two. In dancing festivals you have categories for style, as well as for age and level, so you might find “Baby Ballet” or “C Tap”. On this particular day I noticed that as well as Modern, they were offering Contemporary and not knowing the difference, I turned to Mummy dearest to ask. Do you know the difference? Sorry if you do, just skip to the next paragraph. If you don’t, though, bear with me for a few, well, words. Contemporary, it appears, means modern to the time. Modern means modern now. See? So while all modern dances are currently contemporary, not all contemporary dances are modern. This does tie in to the museum, but you have to read on a bit first to find out why...

### Getting There and Getting In and not Getting Kicked Out ###

The museum is closed on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day but apart from that are open all year round.

This is where the linguistic note above comes in. On offer you can find everything from 17th and 18th century pieces right through to works created last year. Surely the former cannot be counted as “modern”?Still, I’m not complaining because they did have some incredible things to see. It might be overhyped but I liked Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles D’Avignon” (the hooker one) – we even had a copy of it done by our head of Art on the common room wall in 6th form. As well as that there’s Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” (most bon) and Monet’s “Water Lillies” which is either so wonderful or just so large (3 full sized canvasses) that they give it a room of its own. There were a lot of “proper” modern pieces too and one name that sticks in my head (because I like it and, ok fine, bought the postcard) is “Broadway Boogie” by a chap called Mondrain who I think is Dutch but might not be....

There are a number of temporary displays on throughout the year, the one I saw being some of Alberto Giacometti’s sculptures. These were a bit like the El Greco exhibition in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum – over advertised and under impressive. There was a nice sculpture garden though which is permanent and well worth a glance, and bits and bobs dotted around the place.

### Layout ###

There are toilets on all floors – if you’re desperate go straight to the top floor since it seemed to be the only one with no queues. Lifts are available but if you are physically mobile then the escalators are a better bet as they deliver you straight to the centre and take a lot less time.

Terrorism-wise (ah, I love writing that) not much seems to have changed – large bags need to be checked when you arrive (and although you can’t take pictures, you have to keep any cameras with you which I found a bit cheeky) but that’s basically it – no searching or x-raying that I could see at any rate.

They accept cash, travellers cheques and credit cards. This I can cope with. The thing is, they are desperate for you to become a member of the museum (which results in free entry for you, and money for them) – so desperate in fact that they have complicated little brochures available which detail the many, many ways in which you can do this. For example there are retirement plans and bequests and life income plans all set up for you to help them. The best bit, though, has to be the page when they start explaining the tax deduction benefits to you of donating to them – as if they’re doing you a favour by taking your money... another case of OINY I guess.