Having just said in a seperate mail that I think foreigners should pay more
admission than locals, I must confess that I resented the V&A system
enormously when I was in London.  When it costs almost R8.00 to buy
 1,  4 to get into a museum, even a great one, is enormously expensive,
especially for a student on a small budget (my husband) or someone like
me who at the time was doing unpaid research on museums. The V&A is
st up so you have to walk through turnstiles past very intimidating people
standing behind tills. This made the 'voluntary' donation not feel very
voluntary as if you didn't want to give  4 it was difficult to give less or
one felt one needed to explain why you didn't want to pay-I used the
library there quite often. These are my feelings as a visitor of museums
rather than a museologists but I did feel that this was the beginning of an
extremely intimidating and unfriendly museum experience.

Kathryn