Walk-through metal detectors have been a fixture here for years, ditto a perfunctory bag check. This did tend to create queues but nothing ridiculous, and last time I visited back in May I was inside within five minutes. How much worse could it get with liquids banned? Spoilers - really very bad indeed.
n.b. while the Sainsbury Wing is closed the main entrance to the National Gallery is up the steps at the front.
I turned up on the north terrace of Trafalgar Square yesterday morning (midweek, mid-autumn, not yet half term, hardly peak period). Things were already looking grim with a queue all the way along the front of the building and around the corner, almost as far as the National Portrait Gallery's restaurant. On closer inspection this turned out to be three queues but that still wasn't particularly reassuring given that none of them appeared to be moving.
My first issue was to work out which queue to join given that they weren't clearly labelled. I hung around the back of all three and found zero information, just a lot of patient folk occasionally shuffling forwards. I hoped to get more information at the front, below the central staircase, but didn't see anything there either. I walked up to the only obvious member of staff nearby, a bouncer-looking type with a diamond earring, and asked which queue to join. "The Van Gogh's over there," he said, mis-guessing why I was here. I explained I just wanted to join the normal queue and he pointed to the left, which I was pleasantly surprised to see was the shortest of the three. I bet it moves really slowly, I thought.
It did. I joined the back of the queue, just beyond the bollards, just as a homeless chap walked over and quietly harangued us for cash. The sound of Hallelujah drifted over from a nearby busker, followed later by Hotel California, Get Lucky and something by Ed Sheeran. We moved forwards in spits and spurts, not very far, not very often. The family in front of me had a ticklist of places they planned to visit today, starting with Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, now stalling somewhat as they attempted to enter the National Gallery. The family behind me suddenly asked if this was the 1145 queue and I said I didn't know there was such a thing, so one of them walked off to look and it turned out there was, so they left and joined it. We moved no more quickly after that.
It turned out the three queues were as follows:
• General entry: left of steps, 60m
• Members & pre-booked: right of steps, 90m
• Van Gogh exhibition: via accessible entrance, 90m
It took a very tedious 35 minutes to reach the foot of the steps where two of the queues met. Here I finally found the sole signage explaining which queue was which, but on small pink boards displayed at shoulder height where they were easily blocked. At 10am no doubt they're very legible but once a queue develops people's bodies swiftly hide them from view. A single member of staff was checking punters on the pre-booked side, either QR codes displayed on phones or printouts proffered on sheets of paper. Unsurprisingly he was also having to deal with regular questions from members of the public baffled by which queue was which, and you could see them weighing up whether seeing the lovely art was worth the obvious wait. Two smart looking gentlemen, seemingly queuejumping, took some persuading that they couldn't simply walk in like it was last Wednesday or something.
Climbing the steps would normally have been a simple matter but in this case it took 20 minutes to get from the bottom to the top. The pre-booked queue alongside was moving faster but not significantly faster, which must've been frustrating. Only when you reached the top was there a sign pointing out what couldn't be taken inside - knives, aerosols and fireworks, obviously, but also now liquids, placards and cut flowers. Four bins had been provided for chucking away undesirable objects and for pouring away that nice drink you didn't realise you shouldn't have been carrying. By the time I was finally allowed into the building I had been waiting FIFTY-FIVE minutes, which was ridiculous. Even more ridiculous was that the queue then split into ← Bags and No bags →, each with its own detector arch, and because I didn't have a bag I didn't actually need to have waited all that time for a bag search anyway.
From my observations the pre-booked queue moved about twice as fast as the unbooked one but was also 50% longer, i.e. anyone waiting in that queue would have taken about 40-45 minutes to enter the building. That's also a miserable amount of time to be waiting, especially for those who've done as asked and pre-booked a slot. The National Gallery essentially isn't walk-up any more, it's a queueing marathon, and all because visitors can't be trusted not to sneak soup in and chuck it over an Old Master. I felt particularly bad for the Van Gogh queue, most of whom were cultured and elderly but still expected to queue for well over half an hour without anywhere to sit, all the time serenaded by X-Factor level bleating. Perhaps don't visit any time soon.
And yet obviously the art was a brilliant as ever, and with fewer people milling about even easier to admire. I can't normally get a shot of Bathers at Asnières without any people standing in front but yesterday I took one almost straight away. I loved the small room reminiscing about David Hockney's love for Piero della Francesca's The Baptism of Christ and how he sneaked it into a couple of his paintings. On a larger scale the new Constable exhibition is stimulatingly excellent, focused around The Hay Wain (unglued version) but also featuring preparatory sketches and other similarly rural works. It's free to enter and open until 2nd February so you have plenty of time to get here, and also to hope they either scrap this infuriating liquids ban or find a much more efficient way of enforcing it. We shouldn't have to wait out in the cold for an hour while a paltry number of guards rummage around the deeper recesses of rucksacks and handbags looking for something that shouldn't be there.
For comparison I also went to five other museums and galleries to see how faffy their current entry procedures are.
Science Museum: The online pre-booking procedure for free admission tickets is still eight pages long, which the administrative curmudgeons try to insist you complete on your phone before entering. I ignored that and walked up to the queueless desk where there are now only three questions (Have you been here before? Name? Would you like to donate?) and was entering the museum with my paper ticket less than a minute later. Natural History Museum: I used the side entrance on Exhibition Road to skip the line out front and it paid dividends. "Is it OK if I hold you here, just to say you’ve queued?" asked the steward, somewhat suspiciously, and again I was barely there for a minute. Victoria & Albert Museum: no bag, no questions, straight in. National Portrait Gallery: no bag, no questions, straight in. British Museum: I went to the front where you normally enter, only to find a sign saying that's now for "pre-booked tickets only" and ticket-free visitors have to enter round the back on Montague Place. Grrr. It took me eight minutes to walk to the rear entrance, then just two to pass through the security cabin where my non-existent bag didn't have to be checked. Ten minutes total, so easily the faffiest of this fivesome but still nowhere near as miserable as the National Gallery suddenly is.
Update: I've been back one week later and the queueing system has changed...
• General entry: left of steps, 110m
• Members: right of steps, no queue
• Van Gogh exhibition: via accessible entrance, no queue
Advance booking is no longer available so all walk-up visitors join the same queue. This is much longer than before but moves faster because the number of bag checkers has been increased from three to five. It took me 30 minutes to gain entry, much better than last week's 55 minutes but still a lengthy queueing marathon. The gallery was noticeably busier.
