Abba make an exhibition of themselves. Photograph: E Hamilton West
The best thing about the newly-announced Abba museum in Stockholm - essentially Graceland with flat-pack furniture - is that there will, from 2008, be a permanent shrine to the band without any pilgrimages necessary to see the godawful Mamma Mia!
From a band that has sold over 370 million albums and still sells another three million each year, you might expect the place to be built out of solid gold. This is all to be confirmed, but according to the details released today there will definitely be interactive elements, like being able to sing along to Abba tracks in a "studio".
Hopefully the museum will also be like the Natural History Museum, with a huge, deformed approximation of Benny's skeleton looming down in the entrance hall at terrified parties of school children. It would also be good if there were lookalikes wandering in and out of the lifts, like at the end of Abba: the Movie. As well as an interactive feature where you get to marry someone you work with, have a huge argument, split up, then bang on about it ALL THE TIME to anyone who will listen.
The opportunities are endless. Imagine the 'Dinner Takes It All' Abba café, with its Chiquitita Masala and themed range of 'Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Flan After Midnight)' quiches.
(Museum curators reading the above should note that all the above ideas are copyright the Guardian Arts Blog and may only be used in exchange for two tickets to the opening of the museum, some free flights to Stockholm, and unlimited goes on the Fernando ride.)
Naturally, given all the potential, if it all turns out to be Abba Gold on repeat and a couple of jumpsuits in a Perspex box there will be a polite but very violent riot. Abba themselves reckon it will be a "fun and groovy museum to visit", but the concept of an Abba museum does not come without its downsides. Specifically a Bjorn Again Museum in a shed down the road and, a few years later, a commemorative dustbin dedicated to the work of Steps.
Would you go? And what would you put in it?
