Sweet and saccharine, or subversive with a dark undercurrent? The Cute exhibition at Somerset House shows that even what appears at first glance to be a cute cat photo can be more than meets the eye. But with a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Hello Kitty, including a themed cafe and Hello Kitty disco room, and more fluffy kittens than you can shake a stick at, this is definitely a great exhibition for cat lovers and also, in my opinion, really good for children. Any sense of a dark undercurrent or a menacing side to the cuteness totally went over my six year old’s head, and she absolutely loved it (and so did I!).
Cute is a temporary exhibiton “exploring the irrestible force of cuteness in contemporary culture” at Somerset House, running from 25 January to 14 April 2024. It was bigger than I expected and we spent about an hour and a half going around – bearing in mind that was at child speed so we didn’t really stop to read many of the signs explaining each exhibit.
Before you go in, you can scan a QR code and create a cute character choosing from different shapes, expressions and so on, which is then displayed on a large digital screen in front of you. My daughter and her cousin enjoyed this and it’s good to spend a few minutes if you arrive a bit early.
As you enter the ticket desk area, don’t miss the AI-generated photographic style images of cute cats on the walls – good to look at if you have to queue, but as you get a timed entry ticket if you pre-book (which is recommended), we walked straight up to the desk but then decided to wait and explore this first section before going in. My daughter and I both loved how cute and colourful they all were – and it was only thanks to this review in the Guardian afterwards that the darker undertone already starts here. The curator told the newspaper she wanted to make visitors feel uncomfortable – look closer and you will see many of the cats have an extra paw or two, appear to be squeezed into something that could be a pastel-coloured fashion statement or perhaps torture device, or have a metal horn looking like it has been screwed into their fluffy heads. But my daughter was totally oblivious to this and to be honest I didn’t really spot it either (my excuse was trying to keep with a whirlwind of a six year old and her seven year old cousin!).
Inside, the first room is dedicated to cats, with a collection of ornaments and artwork, followed by a Japanese-themed room with an explanation of ‘kawaii’ – a term that has become common recently to describe the likes of Squishmallow toys and seemingly any cute cartoon animal with over-exaggerated features. I learnt that cuteness actually took on a more subversive form as young people used kawaii as a way to show dissatisfaction with society’s traditional values and to push back against accepted norms.
The next room is a dream for fans of Hello Kitty – even the walls are formed of hundreds of Hello Kitty soft toys fixed to the wall, with little benches you can sit on for a selfie or to lean back against the soft toys (I’m sure there’s also some sort of dark hidden meaning at play here too). It was interesting to learn about the history of Hello Kitty and see how the designs have changed through time, as well as to see a selection of products and merchandise available through the years, from stationery to shoes to television sets, Hello Kitty zombie figures and more.
Then, have a boogie at the Hello Kitty disco with its iridescent walls and disco ball before you go upstairs and look down on the room from above and can see the doorway is actually the Hello Kitty face shape.
Upstairs the mood is more sombre, with a display demonstrating the link between cuteness and sadness, some slightly creepy artwork on the walls that my daughter breezed past, some cuddly monsters and more. For vintage/retro fans there are also My Little Pony, Care Bears, Sylvanian Families and more (which are all still current but I had them as a child in the 80s!).
A rainbow archway leads into a room styled as a girls’ sleepover, where you can recline on pillows and watch a video that according to my sister who read the sign I missed, had something to do with juxtaposing the fun of a sleepover with the anxiety felt by many teenage girls. My daughter just liked playing on the pillows!
The other rooms upstairs were also very interactive; in one, you could stand on a spot and have a digitised image of yourself projected onto a screen and have it capture your movements; in other, there are computer games to play. One involved running a cat cafe and another had something to do with a frog sitting in a pot that was coming to the boil but it didn’t want to get out as it was warm – the little girl playing it didn’t seem to really understand what she was meant to do in the game (and neither did I, watching from the queue) but it seemed to me that the frog was having some kind of existential crisis. Cuteness indeed.
The gift shop is full of cute toys, stationery, books and so on – some things seemed fairly expensive but we also got a ‘How to draw kawaii characters’ book for £4.99 which my daughter really enjoyed as she’s starting to draw in that style sometimes anyway.
We didn’t go in or even get to see the Hello Kitty cafe unfortunately, as there was a long queue, and I could see a sign saying ‘Expected queue time from here: 1.5 hours’. You don’t need a ticket to the museum to go into the cafe, and it was Mother’s Day, which I expect made it busier than usual – which was a shame as I had wanted to go in.
The exhibition is something that can be enjoyed on many levels – kids will enjoy it, with younger children remaining untroubled by any of the subversive undertones, while older visitors would likely enjoy learning about that side of ‘cute’ culture. It’s also a must if you are a Hello Kitty fan or indeed a fan of cats!
Mini Moo Life 
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