Royal Art Museum

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This Ankh-Morpork establishment, on Broadway, has featured in two Discworld novels and had a cameo role in a third.

In Thief of Time, it becomes a battleground between the Auditors and Susan Sto Helit.

In Thud!, it is central to the puzzle of why the deep-down Dwarves are excavating mines under the city, but in the manner of a good clue, this is not realised until quite late on in the story.

In Making Money, a minor background detail for those who are paying attention is the reported theft of William Pouter's portrait of Vetinari, Man With Dog. Otherwise the art gallery is only referred to in passing.

The establishment is curated by Sir Reynold Stitched, and we also learn the resident caretaker/security man is called Old John, who lives with his family up in the attic. (Presumably, when Unity invites Susan to pull up a small human and sit down, the human family frozen in time are Old John and his dependents). The security system of the Art Gallery consists of Old John plus the Gargoyles who stand watch over the main entrances. This is evidently not enough: Lobsang Ludd remarked to Susan that the Thieves' Guild had shown him five ways of getting into the place undetected, and that was only from the back of the building.

After the unfortunate business with Daniellarina Pouter and her seminal work Don't Talk To Me About Mondays, the Gallery doesn't do all that many modern art exhibitions - it has discovered that the Patrician also has Views about modern art. Although he nailed her ear to that wooden post most graciousleah.

Works on display include:-

  • Caravati's Three Large Pink Women and One Piece of Gauze
  • The Goddess Anoia Arising From the Cutlery
  • Daniellarina Pouter's Freedom! (a tall wooden stake with a nail protruding from it at head-height. Would sell for $AM30,000, incidentally)
  • William Pouter's more conventional portrait of the city ruler, Man With Dog.
  • Sir Robert Cuspidor's Wagon Stuck in River
  • Mauvaise's sculpture Man with Big Figleaf
  • Lots of pictures of women, with very few clothes on, posing by an Urn.
  • Lots of pictures of women, with very few clothes on, draped in small amounts of filmy gauze.
  • Methodia Rascal's The Battle of Koom Valley
  • Blitz's The Battle of Ar-Gash