Museums must shift their emphasis from visitor experience to collection care, says Simon Tait in response to the British Museum crisis.
A month ago this column asked what on earth was going on at the British Museum, its director having announced his departure next year in an announcement made a few weeks before he was due to reveal the “multigenerational” masterplan he had been hired to develop.
There were rows about returning “stolen” objects to their countries of origin, there was apparently a deal in the making for quenching the 200-year-old dispute over the Parthenon sculptures, the BP sponsorship the director was clinging to (but now ended), and there had been a tiff with the government over what to do about the BM’s founder Hans Sloane having made his fortune from slavery in the Black Lives Matter dust-up (Sloane’s portrait bust was moved from the main entrance to a low shelf in a side gallery).
But what has now transpired has blown all that out of the water...Keep reading on Arts Industry.
A month ago this column asked what on earth was going on at the British Museum, its director having announced his departure next year in an announcement made a few weeks before he was due to reveal the “multigenerational” masterplan he had been hired to develop.
There were rows about returning “stolen” objects to their countries of origin, there was apparently a deal in the making for quenching the 200-year-old dispute over the Parthenon sculptures, the BP sponsorship the director was clinging to (but now ended), and there had been a tiff with the government over what to do about the BM’s founder Hans Sloane having made his fortune from slavery in the Black Lives Matter dust-up (Sloane’s portrait bust was moved from the main entrance to a low shelf in a side gallery).
But what has now transpired has blown all that out of the water...Keep reading on Arts Industry.