Room with a view ... Tate Modern. Photograph: Sarah Lee
One of the true delights of Britain, and London particularly, is the wealth of art galleries. A key ingredient of London's reputation as the liveliest city on the planet. Even if you did nothing else but visit new exhibitions as they opened, you would be pushed to keep up, especially if you included all the smaller ones. And it gets better each year as lottery money keeps the wheels of expansion rolling. It is probably the only thing that John Major's administration (which introduced the lottery) will be remembered for.
Yet despite the fact that many of the major museums and galleries have free entry, there is a boom in people wanting to pay through the various Friends schemes that have been introduced as a way of raising extra money. Practically every major gallery has one and those that haven't - such as the National Gallery - are thinking about introducing one.
The National Portrait Gallery off Trafalgar Square, hosting the largest collection of portraits in the world, has been revitalised in recent years. It charges only £25 for yearly membership (or £36 with a pass for a guest). If you take a guest to the current exhibition, Face of Fashion, costing £8, you will already have recouped 44% of the purchase price and if you go twice it will have almost have paid for itself. If you include the 10% discount off anything from the shop and also (rarely for a gallery) off meals in the stunning rooftop restaurant, then membership will basically give you a substantial free ride for the rest of the year. The downside is it doesn't have a members' room as most other big galleries do.
By contrast the Royal Academy in Piccadilly has two spaces for members - a dining room and a lounge where you can sit in comfortable armchairs and have a drink or a cup of tea, the only drawback being that it is nearly always full. This is the inevitable price of popularity as the Friends scheme, which celebrates its 30th anniversary later this year, now has a staggering 90,000 members, much larger than any other gallery.
Membership looks expensive compared with the National Portrait Gallery (£60 if you do it by direct debit or £70 otherwise) but could be the cheapest of the lot if you use it regularly. That £60 includes one guest and entry for your children, shop discounts, an excellent quarterly magazine (which sells at £5 a copy in the shops) and entry to previews.
Since the RA, unlike the publicly-owned galleries, charges £8 to £10 for all its shows the regular visitors who are Friends can recoup their investment very quickly. One of the less well known attractions of the RA is that the gallery and the restaurant stay open late on Friday nights.
Until recently the V&A had a very small stuffy room for Friends but a new swankier room opened last year has greatly increased its attraction. It charges £40 for a single person which gives free entry to all paid-for exhibitions (saving £10 a time) and a magazine, but no discounts in the shops (those had to be withdrawn so subscriptions could qualify for tax relief). The Friends scheme has been going for around 30 years but has less than 12,000 members, which makes it a minnow compared with its central London rivals.
My personal favourite has got to be the Tate. It is not the cheapest. It costs £47 for single membership or £68 with a guest tagged on. But it offers far more for regular users and, for groupies like me, it is nirvana. The card can be used at all Tate venues (St Ives, Liverpool and the two galleries in London) giving free access to a large variety of paid-for events that no other gallery can rival including previews, with wine served beforehand, that have become big social events in their own right.
Membership allows use of the small and little used facility at Tate Britain but also the large and welcoming Friends Room at Tate Modern with its open air terrace and awesome views over the Thames and St Pauls.
Why anyone needs to pay for an expensive London club when you can get a space like this thrown in as part of a membership that has all the usual perks (shop discounts, free magazine etc) defeats me.
These are the most attractive schemes among the London galleries but it is also worth mentioning the ICA in the Mall, which is surprisingly little known about beyond its dedicated clientele. You couldn't ask for a more central venue and its £35 a year membership fee entitles you to free views of their cutting-edge exhibitions and access to a venue that serves good-value meals, has cinemas and a club that stays open until 1am. So don't tell anyone.
