Rethinking the British Museum

Interesting exhibition at the British Museum introducing five possible redesigns of their west wing.

The show was held in the Reading Room, which it is always magical to enter, and consisted of architects’ models of the five ideas. The space under review represents over a third of their displays, and currently includes the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon Sculptures and the Assyrian Lion Hunt.

I’m not convinced that some of the designs would give more and better space for display they seemed to concentrate more on providing prestige public space which seems a common theme of museum refurbishment. It’s great to get more people to come but surely you want to entice them to look at the objects and research.

I think I would have found it useful to have a model of what the space is like now to make more direct comparisons. There was a plan but I found it hard to visualise how that related to the new ideas.

Closed 2 March 2025

 

 

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