I have an embarrassing confession to make. It will probably undermine any authority I might have as ‘art critic’, but I couldn’t write about Love Art After Dark without mentioning the fact that before Wednesday evening I’d never been to the Fitzwilliam Museum, despite currently living under sixty seconds walking distance away. This annual student night, which opens up the Museum’s whole collection after-hours along with curators’ talks, art workshops and live music, served for me not only as a fun evening but also as an exciting introduction to the Museum itself.

However, upon arrival, it felt like the organisers hadn’t considered that for some of the attendees - particularly during fresher’s term - this would be their first visit to the Museum. We were simply provided with a programme, a blue token to exchange for a free glass of wine, and left to our own devices. As we walked through the courtyard, we arrived at the bar and picked up our drinks, before realising that our full glasses of wine barred us from most rooms in the Museum. Restricted to the ground floor, we found ourselves accidentally happening across one of the ‘7 Wonders of the Fitz’, a selection of standout pieces chosen by the Fitzwilliam Museum Society to form a ‘Love Trail’. This one was an incredible stoneware punch bowl fashioned in the shape of an enormous owl by Edwardian potters the Martin brothers. 

Despite some original disorientation then, the ‘Love Trail’, along with the generally more relaxed and social ‘after-hours’ atmosphere, made the event feel like the perfect way to first encounter the Museum’s extensive collection. Often in museums there can be a pressure to studiously scrutinise every object in every room in contemplative silence. When you have hundreds of deserving masterpieces vying for attention, this experience can be incredibly overwhelming, leading to the dreaded ‘museum fatigue’, when your feet start hurting, everything starts looking the same and you just want to go to the gift shop. Love Art After Dark, in contrast, seemed to encourage a far more spontaneous and casual museum-going experience, as we wandered from room to room, pausing to admire whatever happened to catch our eyes, or to listen to one of eight curator talks that were going on throughout the night. 

These curator talks, in which each specialist discussed a particular artwork that they loved, provided another interesting way to focus your attention amidst the massive collection. The talks themselves, though, were hit-and-miss. One curator discussing doppelgängers and identical dress in the Victorian painting ‘The Twins, Kate and Grace Hoare’ by John Everett Millais seemed to be reading extracts from her PhD dissertation, a little awkward and difficult to follow. One of the highlights of my evening, however, was a talk given by Craig Hartley on one of the current exhibitions, Snow Country: Woodcuts of the Japanese Summer. Taking up the event’s theme of love, art and the dark, he engrossed us in the story behind a beautiful colour print of a scene from eleventh-century novel The Tale of Genji, reading us the relevant passage, a particularly racy extract in which Prince Niou steals his lover Ukifune away on a snowy night: “already he had wooed her, he would have thought, to some purpose: to-night he would show her what love really was”. This curator’s talk demonstrated how an interactive and personalised exhibition experience can be far more engaging and entertaining. 

To engage and entertain seemed to be the event’s primary aims, inspiring love for the Museum from a black-tie champagne reception to art workshops to some excellent musical performances. As the event drew to a close, Cambridge’s celebrated a capella group Cadenza performed to a huge audience in the Museum’s courtyard. With hilarious renditions of love-themed classics such as Cry Me a River sung by extremely talented voices, they truly captured the spirit of the evening: pure fun.