A [Disgruntled] Review of the Liverpool World Museum's "Magic Worlds" Exhibition.

Today I visited the Liverpool World Museum, for the first time in a long time, to see the 'Magic Worlds' exhibition. The Exhibition boasted "a world of enchantment, illusion, and fantasy". Alas, all it held for me was disenchantment, disillusionment and fantasies of inserting Sooty's magic wand up through my neck, into my carotid artery, and then swirling it around, so that I wouldn't have to endure another second of the crippling disappointment this exhibition inflicted upon me.

Don't let the pretty lights fool you.

The first thing I noticed upon entering the floor was an excess of empty space. Perhaps I was naïve in expecting a comprehensive collection of magical artifacts to be displayed in some whimsically cluttered array, but even the most jaded pessimist would be sorely let down by the striking paltriness of this depressingly meagre exhibition.

One of the first cabinets I saw was apparently a tribute to the Harry Potter franchise. Not the character, or the magical world in which he resides, but the media franchise of Harry Potter. It contained a pitiful handful of Harry Potter merchandise; some unpackaged plastic figures (which looked suspiciously like the cheap knock-offs you see in Home and Bargain), a small Harry Potter Lego play set, and a dirty, obviously second hand copy of the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Nintendo Wii game. I would like to know who procured that awful, awful game, and what degree of negligence prevailed in their childhood for them to believe it was special enough to belong in a museum...

Indiana Jones and the Temple of CEX.

The rest of the Exhibition wasn't much better. I found myself desperately scavenging the room for anything that wasn’t exceptionally boring, which resulted in a horrible sense of unsated suffocation. Mostly displayed were ordinary children's toys, with little context as to what they were or what their significance was (most likely because they didn't have any). Even kids seemed jaded as they declined their parents' suggestion to go and "experience the Mad Hatter's tea party" (a table with an incomplete toy tea set on it). Other "artifacts" included a picture of Paul Daniels, a 2008 poster of the musical 'Wicked', a Kinder Surprise'Smurf' toy, and another second hand copy of the Chronicles of Narnia Nintendo DS Game.

I asked one of the curators if he thought the exhibition was really an "exploration into ethereal realms of fairies, folklore, wizards and witches" or just an alarming betrayal of the disgraceful lack of funding our Museums receive.

"Well, I think [the V & A Museum of Childhood] have done a good job with what they've got, but I agree with you; what they've got isn't enough, and I suppose it does all come down to government funding, really. And not just this [exhibition] either, the whole of our museum needs it."

We talked for a while about the Liverpool World Museum's other displays; the words "half-arsed" and "not as good as it could be" came up a lot. It is sad to think of any Museum being neglected and under-valued. Especially now; in the age of Wikipedia and Youtube; museums should be more important to us than ever. Anything that can drag us away from our smart phones and computer monitors, and show us the world of extraordinary curiosities that we might look upon with our own eyes should surely be valued. Magic and folklore was clearly too ambitious a theme for the Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood. If, for some reason, you'd still like to see it, the 'Magic Worlds' exhibition will be on the second floor of the Liverpool World Museum until the 2nd March 2014.