The Guardian view on Neil MacGregor: a giant of Britain’s cultural life
|
Version 0 of 1. Neil MacGregor is stepping down after 13 years at the British Museum. It is not unexpected. There had been hints recently about the future of the man who transformed the profile of the once cobwebby institution, doubled visitor numbers, and turned himself into a national treasure. For visitors to the museum and listeners to his BBC Radio 4 series alike, he has not so much pushed back the frontiers of our understanding of cultural artefacts as removed them altogether. He has a rare capacity to take just a few hundred words, or five minutes on the radio, to conjure up art and artistry, craftmanship and politics, the detail of individual endeavour and the broad sweep of history. He applied this blend of the learned and the human equally to the first known image of Christ from a Dorset mosaic in an early exhibition about art and memory, and to the humble handcart used by ethnic Germans fleeing from the east at the end of the second world war, in last year’s very personal exhibition, Germany: Memories of a Nation. He could talk about Babylon or the Benin bronzes with the same exhilarating breadth of understanding. So what now? The rumours about a connection with Berlin’s Humboldt Forum, a new centre for art and culture in Berlin due to open in 2019, turn out to be true. He is to be involved with a world cultures venture in Mumbai. There is also a new Radio 4 series planned. Many of his admirers think he should slip seamlessly into one last great project – the BBC’s projected remake of Civilisation. The original 13-part series took two years and was filmed in more than 100 locations in 11 countries. It was a vehicle for all the sweeping prejudices and majestic pronouncements of another erudite and gifted communicator, Kenneth Clark. In 1969, it defined the ambition of the new BBC2. The genius, and the terror, of “civilisation” is in the capaciousness of the word. Lord Clark’s Civilisation is not entirely about images but that’s what he knew, and it was the classic works of art that dominated his version of what he defined as the alternative to barbarism. Lord Clark was immensely rich and highly educated. He saw the potential of deploying the didactic capacity of television to introduce the masses to high art, not to questioning what high art might mean in a democratic age. A Civilisation made by Mr MacGregor would be a very different project. There would be no narrow focus on western art, nor judgmental ranking, except by the sheer fact of an artefact’s inclusion. It is easy to imagine a kind of illustrated A History of the World in 100 Objects, with the MacGregor charm and his unassuming presence illuminating the world’s imagination and the ideas and experiences that shaped it. He would unquestionably bring a more global understanding of the notion of civilisation than Lord Clark. But could he, at 68, mould our conception of it afresh? The original series re-established the purpose of public service broadcasting. The BBC needs to pull off the same trick again. Still, even if he turns out not to be the man to define Civilisation for a new era, one thing is beyond doubt: Mr MacGregor is indispensable to the nation’s cultural life. |