Nicholas Cullinan, the new director of the British Museum, has made big promises to overhaul the tainted institution.
In March, Nicholas Cullinan was announced as the new director of the museum. He took command in June, taking over interim director Mark Jones. Previously, Cullinan led the National Portrait Gallery in London; during his tenure, he oversaw the $55 million refurbishment of the gallery. However, the British Museum posed a challenge of a different magnitude altogether.
In August of last year, it was revealed that more than 2000 artifacts went missing on the inventory of the museum. Over the next weeks, the public came to know about the culpability of former curator Peter Higgs as well as the oversight of then-leadership. Most of the objects remain missing, while the museum is in the middle of a lawsuit against Higgs. In all of this, the image of the iconic museum suffered a major blow.
Nicholas Cullinan has promised to change that. He would be leading a $1.3 billion plan to overhaul the museum. This would include expanding its digital catalog and renovating more than 3,500 rooms and galleries within the British Museum. “I’m going to lead the biggest transformation of any museum in the world,” Cullinan said, adding “Lessons have been learnt and clear action taken. The decision to digitize the whole collection, all eight million items, is obviously a big part of that.”
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It must be noted that severing ties with oil giant BP will not be part of this plan. Even after the news of the missing items broke, the museum went ahead with accepting a $65 million donation from the company. While this move was widely criticized, Nicholas Cullinan has expressed more interest in keeping the museum free for the public.
