Charlotte Appleyard hosted Peter Thiel at a VIP viewing of the British Museum’s Bayeux tapestry exhibition space on 18 August. The visit took place before the gallery opened to the public, while the museum was still managing access around the tapestry’s light limits.
Peter Thiel was given the private viewing in the exhibition space earlier this month. The British Museum has now said the next wave of public tickets will go on sale on 21 October at 10am, after earlier sales drew queues of up to nine hours.
Charlotte Appleyard and the viewing
Appleyard, the museum’s director of development, hosted him at the exhibition space. George Osborne was aware of the viewing but did not attend with Thiel, according to the museum account. The museum has also said Thiel is not a donor and that no money has been received via him or his businesses.
The setting was not a finished public gallery. The exhibition space is still under construction, and only limited viewings have been possible across a range of stakeholders. That made the private visit different from a standard public ticket, even before the museum reopened sales.
Light hours and access
The British Museum says it has a careful light-hour allocation plan agreed in partnership with colleagues in France, and that no light hours were taken from the allocation for public visitors. Staff still raised concerns that scarce conservation exposure was being given to someone with no known interest in the museum.
Those concerns were tied to perception as well as conservation. Senior museum leaders were warned about the public reading of special treatment for someone linked to Jeffrey Epstein and whose company, Palantir, plays a controversial role in the British state.
Public tickets on 21 October
The museum’s public release now becomes the immediate next step. Earlier this summer, online queues reached up to nine hours, with reports of 40,000 people queueing by mid-morning and almost 80,000 people by mid-afternoon.
For readers hoping to get in, the practical point is simple: the next public sale opens on 21 October at 10am. Guests at One Aldwych hotel can get tickets without joining the online queues, while the museum continues its limited-viewing approach around the Bayeux tapestry display.
