How could I stop thinking about Britain’s misery? There I was, in a sunny south London park on a Sunday afternoon, dully reading political news on my phone, when I was persuaded to put on a cow mask and skirt and join in a carnival. Crisis? What crisis? It was time to parade and dance.
Led by a mirror-shaded policeman riding a hobbyhorse and seduced by trumpeters and drummers, a crowd of dazed Brits embraced a Brazilian festive fever. We became a small part of Rio de Janeiro. As the carnival director told us, the point was not to show off our costumes but to go wild and enjoy ourselves without inhibitions, by dancing to that infectious beat, throwing ourselves to the ground, forming human tunnels. And doing a hokey cokey in which everyone near me shouted “In”’. (Turns out, you can’t escape the aftermath of the EU referendum.)
This was the start of the Festival of Brasil at the Horniman Museum & Gardens in London, a summer-long season of South American culture to mark the summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. If you have never visited the Horniman, do. Its diverse collection spans everything from world art and musical instruments to an aquarium and a glorious display of imaginatively stuffed natural history specimens. It’s a cabinet of curiosities with a family atmosphere. It also has expansive gardens that provide a good venue for a carnival.
Once upon a time, we thought of museums as silent, studious places. Today they are as likely to play host to dancers and wildly costumed processions as to exhibitions of watercolours. But are museums really good places for carnivals? There is a potential tension between the purpose of museums – to educate – and our desire to turn them into party venues.
I saw mild signs of this tension at the Horniman last Sunday. Huge crowds turned out in search of Brazilian fun. At first, there seemed to be a disconnect between older fun-seekers and the actual event. A gang of students headed off to a supermarket for booze because there was none on site. The Horniman, as I say, is very family oriented.
Then the carnival began. Putting on a silly costume and joining in daft antics was not just liberating, it was an education. The organisers (disorganisers?) captured the essence of the carnivalesque, a suspension of rules that turns the world upside down and inside out.
Blimey, that sounds serious. In fact, it was a huge laugh. Museums can create an innocent kind of fun: not drugged mayhem, but something more civic. We laughed, we learned. It was a perfect cocktail to start this Brazilian summer.
You can’t expect a Glastonbury atmosphere at a museum festival. And yet, there has to be some chaos. I have been to two Day of the Dead celebrations at the British Museum. One was unforgettable: it heaved with humanity and had an electrifying, macabre humour. The next was dull and lifeless – a carnival run by curators. Museums must tread a dangerous, thrilling line to make these parties of the people work. The Horniman did it nicely. Bring on the summer, it’s time to dance… at the museum.
