"The key issue is access" - Interview with Neil MacGregor, Director, British Museum

• © British Museum

There are different points of view on the universal mission of museums and the massive transfer of cultural properties over the course of history. Neil MacGregor, the Director of the British Museum, participated in a debate, “Memory and Universality: New Challenges Facing Museums” held at UNESCO Headquarters on 5 February.

Interview by Sue Williams, UNESCO's Bureau of Public Information, and Vincent Noce.

Do you think the cultural property held by major museums such as your own should be given back to the countries this property originates from?

Debates that focus on questions of ownership, debates which are often as much political as cultural, tend in my view to close doors rather than to open them. The key issue for us all is surely not property, but access: how do we ensure that the cultural achievements of humanity can be seen by as many people as possible?

In consequence, I believe that the big challenge for the museum community world-wide- whether those museums have collections that are national or inter-national in scope- is to build a network of partnerships and exchanges that allow cultural objects to circulate freely and frequently.

To date, this has happened through loan exhibitions. But these have predominantly been exchanges among rich countries. We must widen the scope of those exchanges, and they must not only be exchanges of objects, but of knowledge and interpretation. People and skills need to travel, not only things.
UNESCO could contribute a great deal toward this, by encouraging the circulation of works rather than seeking to enclose them within national borders. UNESCO has a restitution committee. I believe it needs, even more, a committee for partnerships and exchange of cultural goods and museum skills.

Are the doors starting to open in this direction?

The British Museum like many other major world museums is already working in this direction. We live in an era where technology allows for much greater contact and outreach and above all for much safer movement of objects. We are now working energetically with China and the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, devising structures of partnerships that will allow The British Museum’s collections to be seen more widely, allowing millions to discover the other cultures and traditions of the world.

These ventures must be co-operative. For example, an exhibition of objects from the collection of The British Museum was recently organised in Kenya. The objects were selected by a Kenyan curator, who not only chose objects from his own country, but from the surrounding cultures, sending a wonderful message about the large patterns of contact and exchange that have shaped the societies of the region.

Debates over ownership usually involve only two parties, and can have only one answer. If we focus instead on sharing and on access, we have a debate in which the whole world can participate, which has many answers, and which allows everybody to share in those things which truly belong to us all.

The world museums community, working with UNESCO, can make this ideal a reality. That is our big challenge for the years ahead.

• Author(s):Bureau of Public Information
• 05-02-2007