Nicholas Cullinan, director of the British Museum: ‘We can’t give things away, but there is nothing preventing us from sharing the collection’

Nicholas Cullinan, 48, receives EL PAÍS in his office, clad in an impeccable gray suit and a carrying a mug decorated with Rosetta Stone inscriptions. A year has passed since he was named director of the British Museum, the most-visited attraction in the United Kingdom and custodian of one of the most important collections of artifacts in the world. It is also among the most controversial. Its marble statutes from the Greek Parthenon, bronzes from Nigeria’s Benin City and even the Rosetta Stone itself, which hails from Egypt, stand at the center of fiery debate regarding cultural violence.

Cullinan is far from an unknown in the world of culture. He has worked at London’s Tate Museum, and at The Met and the MoMA in New York. Upon his return to London, he led the National Portrait Gallery for eight years, during which he captained a $55 million renovation that not only changed its physiognomy, but also placed it at the center of contemporary discourse.

Cullinan, who worked at the museum’s front desk when he was a student and today wields both encyclopedic knowledge and celebrity friendships with Courtney Love and Tracey Emin, brings in artists and museography that breaks with an exclusively Western mindset and, it bears mentioning, a certain academic tedium. The young director manages to win over the erudite public and seduce the common visitor — who attend the museum en masse — without resorting to the openly political.

Highly educated, but opposed to the typical stratification between high and low culture, and driven when it comes to raising funds, Cullinan’s merits have not gone unnoticed. Last year, he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire.

The British Museum is a mix between great public plaza (it is free to enter) and academic institution. Founded in 1753, it houses eight million pieces, receives six million visitors a year, sprawls throughout 30 buildings and, in recent years, has suffered from overcrowding, leaks, stifling heat and even crime: the discovery of the theft of some 2,000 uncatalogued objects from the museum’s archive led to the departure of its previous director, Hartwig Fischer, in 2023. Some 650 pieces have been recovered to date. To prevent future losses, one of the first projects Cullinan undertook was the digitalization of the entire collection.

But there are more shakeups to come. The British Museum is facing the largest renovation in its history, a masterplan valued at $1.27 billion that will take place over the next few decades in order to guarantee that, in the words of its director “the most universal museum will be universally accessible.” High ideals, a work of dizzying scale and a turbulent world, to say the least. It seems like a job for Nicholas Cullinan.

Question. Trump, the war in Ukraine, the rise of the ultra-right in Europe… How does the craziness in today’s headlines impact a museum like this one?

Answer. We deal in two million years of human history, which is what we have in the collection. The fact that we’re the oldest national public museum in the world, we’re approaching our 275th anniversary… Everything we do, we think about it in terms of perpetuity. We are the third most visited museum in the world. There are queues around the block, because people are looking for another timescale or duration or rhythm.

Q. And how does that affect your work?

A. It affects me like everyone else. You could have days when the world feels like it’s confusing or volatile. That can affect the institution financially. But honestly, part of what you do here is that you’re thinking longer term — and that doesn’t mean that you think you’re above everything. But what you don’t do is make decisions based on a news cycle. When we acquired the Portrait of Omai [the 1776 painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds of the first Polynesian to visit England, one of the first portraits of a racialized person in Western art] for the National Portrait Gallery, it was the biggest acquisition, along with the Picasso painting, that this museum’s made, £50 million [$67 million]. I began work on that acquisition in 2021, and I spoke to lots of colleagues in other museums in London to see if they wanted to collaborate on the acquisition, but everyone was very nervous. There was a cost-of-living crisis, we were still in the middle of the pandemic. They said it wouldn’t be a good look to do a big £50-million-acquisition campaign right now.

Q. And then what happened?

A. I thought, well, that’s not the point. You don’t base your decision on what’s happening day to day, because what you do is meant to last far longer. That painting had been in a bank’s basement for 20 years and it was either going to leave the country for good, or enter a public collection for the first time, which is what happened. We had to turn to the Getty in Los Angeles, because no one would partner with us in our country. But now it’s hanging in the National Portrait Gallery, and that crisis feels like it took place a long time ago.

Q. There wasn’t a reputational crisis?

A. No, it was the crowning achievement of the reopening. In challenging times, people need hope, and they need to feel that they’re being given something that transcends the times.

Q. The British Museum is very related to national identity, a thorny subject. I’m referring, for example, to the narrative control that Trump is imposing on the Smithsonian Museum.

A. The issue there is that the Smithsonian is a federal museum. It’s funded and run by the U.S. government, which is quite unusual among American museums, because most of the big museums, like the Met or MoMA, both of which I have worked at, are essentially private. In our case, we are in a paradox: we’re not a political organization and I’m not allowed to have any political views publicly, so we never really get involved in geopolitics. But what I would say, when there’s challenging times, for whatever reason, it does make you want to focus on providing solace or inspiration.

Q. I’m referring to the use of national culture as a weapon.

A. You described the British Museum as sitting adjacent to national identity, and it does, we were the first institution to be called British. But it was always about a very international, cosmopolitan outlook on the world. It was always about bringing people and cultures together in dialogue with each other. We have 67% international visitors, because I think people want to make connections between different times, different cultures. There could be a very echo chamber, nationalistic approach to things right now, whereas my interest is in actually creating dialogue.

When he got to the museum, Cullinan needed six weeks in order to visit every department and speak with every employee. “Which is a thousand [people],” he specifies. “You can read a lot, but you also do it by listening. It was an amazing crash course, just seeing what my colleagues are doing and what they’re researching.” Visiting the Africa, Oceania and Americas departments, discovering the massive X-ray machine with which large-scale sculptures are scanned — it measures nearly 20 feet across — was “like being back at university.”

Q. Where are you at in the restitution debate?

A. The 20 examples that are affected by it are on our website, because we think it’s very important to be transparent so everyone can see and understand what the claim is, the history of it, the complexity of it. We take all of those really seriously. There’s often a very complex and long-standing discussion.

Q. The Parthenon Marbles are the most urgent example, I suppose?

A. They’re the most famous. I think it’s no secret that we would love to find a partnership with Greece where we would be able to lend on a rolling basis sculptures from the Parthenon, and in exchange, Greece would lend incredible things here. I think a partnership with Greece would be a fantastic thing for both parties, and I think we really hope that that will be possible with the Benin [Nigeria] bronzes. We’ve got the partnership with the MOWAA [Museum of West African Art, which has a digitalized archive of the bronzes that were stolen by Western countries and houses both pieces that have been returned and those obtained in new archeological digs done in collaboration with the British Museum]. It opened in a soft way in November, but the grand opening is this autumn. I can’t wait to see it. The hope is for the partnership to carry on and flourish.

Cullinan doesn’t seem daunted by the challenges pertaining to a collection that is subject to such complex and at-times, bitter debates. The British government prohibits museums from returning pieces, but he is a realist and is committed to “cultural diplomacy.”

The first thing he did upon assuming his position was reach out to the “countries or institutions where there is a claim to see how we can move this conversation forward,” he says. “There are more specific examples. But the general principle is that we’ve got a collection of eight million objects. One percent are on show in the museum. One percent. We want to share that collection as much as we can with the public, which was the whole point of the collection and the museum being founded.”

The British Museum was the first free national museum, and was founded with 70,000 artifacts from Sir Hans Sloane’s collection. “This institution is an embassy for all countries, all peoples and all cultures,” says Cullinan. “Sloane said this is for the benefit of all persons, and when he gave his collection to the nation, he specifically wanted it to be in London, because it had the most international audience. But if London said no, it was to be offered to St. Petersburg, Berlin and Madrid.” Universal access to this knowledge is key, says Cullinan. “We want the collection to benefit the people who visit the museum, and we are one of the most generous lenders in the world, 2,000 objects internationally.”

Q. Going back to the Parthenon Marbles, the final decision is the government’s, right?

A. Yes, but it depends more on us, to be honest. We can’t give things away, but there is absolutely nothing preventing us from sharing the collection, and we do that all the time. I think you have to focus on what’s possible, rather than arguing over what you could try and make happen.

Q. You have in your hands a monumental renovations plan for the museum. There are those who question whether it is absolutely necessary.

A. It is absolutely necessary. I mean, the roof will cave in if we don’t do something.

Q. But this isn’t about just patching leaks.

A. It’s several things. There’s a masterplan for the whole museum, and there’s a plan that is evolving to gradually transform and re-hang all of it, starting with the welcome pavilions, to get rid of those white tents. Then comes the Western Range. We’ve done a survey of the building, and the roof will cave in if we don’t tackle it. There’s already leaks, but eventually the roof will cave in.

Q. The press has estimated that the total project will cost $1.27 billion.

A. Some of those galleries haven’t been touched for 50, 60 years. There’s no step-free access if you’re having mobility issues. But also, it could just be so much better and more beautiful.

Q. Are you worried about the money?

A. No. I know it’s a huge amount of money to raise. But the way we’ve done this, which I think is the right way, is when we chose an architect we didn’t say ‘Go away and come up with a finished design and then we’ll give you the contract.’ We asked all five short-listed architects to come up with design ideas, and now the winning architect, Lina Ghotmeh, will begin a collaborative design process with us over the next year. Once we’ve got the design, we will cost it and we will know exactly how much it comes to. It will be in the hundreds of millions, but we’re already having some of the conversations for gifts that will be on a very big scale. The major donors that are in the world today, some of whom have already supported me on the National Portrait Gallery, understand how important this is, how urgent this is. If you have a good idea, money follows. I think what’s bad is if you say, “We only have this much, we have to make something fit this budget.”

Q. In March, you published an op-ed in the Financial Times about the controversy over the British Museum having accepted $67.4 million from the BP petroleum company, arguing that museums can’t be activists. Two years ago, the National Portrait Gallery rejected funds from the Sackler family. How are the lines drawn?

A. It’s never really changed. Some museums are charities, which means they are beholden to accept funds. There have been very good reasons not to accept funds: if they money could be from an illegal source, or if it’s not illegal, but the organization decides there would be reputational damage. Everything you do has to be transparent. Museums exist and are run for public good. What has changed is the tone and fervor around public sponsorship. But a bigger thing is that 20 years ago, when there were the protests against the Iraq War in London, the biggest protest in this nation’s history, a million people marched down Whitehall to Parliament Square. Now, when people want to protest a geopolitical issue, they often think, “a museum.”

Q. The Just Stop Oil people just decided they’re not going to do it anymore.

A. Well, they did. I think they were quite honest in saying that the reason that museums were targeted is because it’s an image that gets a lot of attention. More than if you lie down on a motorway… The problem is that all of this has consequences for smaller organizations and as a result, the public. There are whole programs of community outreach that have been canceled because of activists. And when these small organizations — I won’t name them — explained what that was doing, the activists just said, “we don’t care.” It’s a very single-issue focus. If you care about the climate or what’s happening geopolitically, I was always raised that you donate your time or your money, whichever you have, or both, directly to the cause. You don’t call out a small arts organization or go to a museum. It’s just a performative way to go about things. It’s a kind of thinking that you have to have collateral damage somewhere for you to achieve your goals. March to Parliament Square, that’s the place to protest, because that’s where the government is.

Q. Do you have any shock moments planned, like the Michael Jackson exhibition in the National Portrait Gallery?

A. I’ve got lots of ideas, but nothing like that. Our role is not to be a contemporary art museum, though we do have a very clear series of contemporary interventions, maybe one every year. But I don’t think that trying to program things is the way to change them. We are more archeological, and I think the way to change things is by focusing on the masterplan, on the rehanging of the collection and on the new wealth of pavilions we are building.

Q. Preserving free access to the museum is an issue you’re very concerned about. You didn’t come from a privileged background.

A. We were working class, I was raised on benefits. We were below the poverty line, so financially, pretty tough. But the thing that was amazing is that my parents were very intelligent and had great interest in books, music, the world around them. They gave me access to arts, ideas, culture. So, I feel incredibly privileged, I don’t have a chip on my shoulder because I don’t feel like I had a hard time. I had a great childhood. We just didn’t have any money. We were poor. There were times I was hungry.

Q. Do you think that it is more difficult to access the world of culture today?

A. Unfortunately, yes. I got a student loan when I moved to London, $4,000 a year, in total $16,000 with interest. I made up the rest of the money by working multiple part-time jobs, seven days a week. I worked a lot harder than I do now! The reality is, now it’s even more challenging because you’re taking on a lot more debt. I had people saying to me, don’t do art history, you’re not going to have a career. I ignored them. It would probably be harder to ignore them now.

Q. Was the class divide ever a problem?

A. No. I was born in America, but my parents were British and we moved back when I was four. But my accent still is kind of weird, it sounds Scottish, it’s a bit off-radar. Britain is one of the most class-conscious countries. You can literally pinpoint where someone’s from, how much money they have, by how they pronounce one sentence. But I think people can’t totally pinpoint me. That was a privilege, but I don’t care about it much. Class is a real thing. I just don’t think it should define people. I definitely don’t think if someone comes from a working-class background, that they should feel intimidated by that, or that something isn’t for them. That’s nonsense.

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