Famous British museums and exhibitions
The British Museum was founded in 1753 and opened its doors in 1759. It was the first national
museum to cover
all fields of human knowledge, open to visitors from across the world
Enlightenment ideals and values – critical scrutiny of all assumptions, open debate, scientific
research, progress and tolerance – have marked the Museum since its
The Museum is driven by an insatiable
curiosity for the world, a deep belief in objects as
reliable witnesses and documents of human history, sound research, as well as the desire to
expand and share knowledge
The British Museum has had its most successful spring on record, due in large part to the
blockbuster
Pompeii and Herculaneum show, which is on course to be its third most popular
exhibition since it opened its doors in 1753.
The show has already attracted more than 287,000 visitors, double its projected number, and by
the time it closes on 29 September it is expected to be one of the British Museum's most
popular exhibitions, after Tutankhamun in 1972 and the Chinese terracotta warriors in 2007.
Another 35,000 people
will have seen the show, described by the Guardian as "undoubtedly one
of the most momentous archaeological exhibitions ever staged", in British cinemas, a first for
the museum.
The film of the exhibition,
Pompeii and Herculaneum Live
, will be shown in more than 1,000
venues in 51 countries later this summer.
The museum reported that 1.7 million people had visited since 1 April, with the number of
visitors in May up 42% on the same month last year.
It was Britain's most popular visitor attraction for the sixth year running in 2012, with 5.6
million people entering its colonnaded portals despite the competing attraction of
the Olympics,
said its chairman, Niall FitzGerald.
The other big draw last month was the
Ice Age Art
exhibition, which, although it did not find a
commercial sponsor, was described as a runaway success with 90,000 visitors, outstripping
expectations by more than 130%he economic impact of the museum is not in question," said
FitzGerald, with one in 10 overseas tourists to the UK and one in four visitors to London
visiting it. "More important is its creative and intellectual contribution."
He described the 5% funding cut expected in this week's comprehensive
spending review as
"not negligible", especially as funding had already been cut by 24% over the course of the
current parliament. The museum's director, Neil MacGregor, said that staff had not yet analysed
how the effects of the cut would be absorbed when it takes effect in 2015, but it was a "material
squeeze".
The museum has successfully attracted other sources of income in recent years, including
private donors. Research funding in particular has risen 30-fold over the past decade, and the
museum now raises £6 for every £4 it receives from the government.
Next spring it opens its new £135m exhibition and conservation centre
with a show devoted to
the Vikings that would change the way we think about our history, MacGregor said, noting that
England was at the centre of a Viking network that spread from the Black Sea to Dublin. The
centre,
designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners
, is still as much as £20m short of its
fundraising target but FitzGerald said he was confident it would be fully funded by the time it
opens.
MacGregor said the museum had lent items to 69 British institutions over the past financial year
and was the world's leading lender of
objects internationally, despite receiving no state funding
for such activities. It has also helped acquire and repatriate objects that had been stolen from
Afghanistan's national museum and smuggled into Britain.
The British Museum is also advising on a new museum planned to open in the southern Iraqi
city of Basra in 2014, but both MacGregor and FitzGerald expressed caution about the
institution being regarded as a branch of British soft diplomacy. "We may be called the British
Museum, but we think of ourselves as of the world and for the world," FitzGerald said. He
cited
the recent loan to Tehran of the
Cyrus Cylinder
to Tehran – recording , which records the
Persian king's granting of religious freedoms after his conquest of Babylon in 539 BC. "Had we
asked the Foreign Office's advice, it would almost certainly have been not to do it. But it started
a debate in Iran of which we have perhaps seen a small reflection in the recent elections."
Forthcoming exhibitions include shows devoted to pre-Columbian gold, and sex in Japanese
art, and an exhibition for 2014 that MacGregor said would focus not on the centenary of the
first world war but on "what sense of the past people brought with them" when Germany
reunified in 1989.
