Simon Stephens, British Museum director wants to tackle Parthenon marbles issue, Museums Association, 18 July 2024
Nicholas Cullinan discusses contested objects, sponsorship and thefts in Radio 4 interview.
British Museum director Nicholas Cullinan has said he wants to work in partnership with the Greek government over the future of the Parthenon marbles.
Cullinan discussed this on Radio 4’s Today programme on 18 July, his first interview since becoming director of the London institution six weeks ago.
Cullinan, the former director of London’s National Portrait Gallery, was asked whether lending would work as a model for the Parthenon sculptures.
“I would hope a partnership of some form is possible and that is something I think we will definitely want to take forward,” Cullinan said. “It’s a bit too soon for me to get into the particulars around how that could work, but I’m hopeful.”
Cullinan would not say how long it might take to reach an agreement.
“It will take as long as it takes,” he said. “You can’t rush these things.”
Cullinan also discussed wider repatriation claims and how the museum should address its colonial legacy.
“It’s a collection of 8 million objects, and the number of objects subject to discussion [around repatriation] is around 15,” he said. “The British Museum, like the National Portrait Gallery, represents this country’s history. It was founded 270 years ago and represents all the chapters that have taken place since then, including issues around empire or colonialism.
“And I think the challenge for us, again like the National Portrait Gallery, is not to deny that or suppress that but to be open and then to think how can we do something positive with this legacy.”
In the interview, Cullinan was also asked about the British Museum’s recent decisionto take sponsorship from oil and gas company BP. A 30-year BP sponsorship of the National Portrait Gallery’s portrait award came to an end in 2022 when the organisations decided not to renew a contract that had come to an end.
Cullian said the BP money was needed at the British Museum to support its redevelopment plans.
“It’s a huge project, it will it will cost hundreds of millions of pounds and that money has to be found somewhere,” he said. “And as we all know, public finances are very squeezed. It would be quite difficult for us to expect the bulk of that to come from the British taxpayer given where we are.
“And so, as a public museum that is there to serve the public, we spend a huge amount of time fundraising to try to turn private wealth into public good.”
Cullinan also said that the public supports the British Museum taking sponsorship from BP.
“There haven’t been major protests and also there was a lot of research and polling taken to understand how people feel about this issue,” he said.
“And the actual fact is the majority of the British public support taking this money because they understand that the money won’t be able to come from public finances.”
Cullinan did not say where the research or polling into public attitudes towards the BP deal came from.
Cullinan was also asked about how the museum is dealing with the ongoing fallout from last year’s theft scandal, when it was revealed that almost two thousand objects had been damaged, lost or stolen from the museum’s collections, allegedly by a former member of staff.
The news became public in August 2023, when Hartwig Fischer was director, and the museum has been trying to recover the items ever since.
“A year on, a lot of good work has been done to recover the objects,” Cullinan said. “We’ve recovered around half, which people thought would take five years at minimum. The team working on this are extraordinary, with their dedication and perseverance. So there’s also lots of reasons for optimism.”
The vast majority of the items were from the Department of Greece and Rome and mainly fall into two categories: gems and jewellery.
The British Museum announced in May that 268 objects had been recovered, taking the total number of recovered items to 626 out of the approximately 1,500 objects.
