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Great Court at the British Museum

I used to be a once-a-week regular at the British Museum - so much so that I got bought a coffee there by a couple of BBC researchers after someone to chat with for a programme they were making.

Since travelling to Greece and visiting the Parthenon and Acropolis, though the place has somewhat lost its appeal. The Greek authorities have been very good about pointing out, in a constructive and low-key way, that many of the site’s real treasures were boxed up and shipped off to London in the early 1800s and can now be found in the museum’s London galleries.

The same could be said for many artefacts found in other rooms there, including Egyptian mummies, French clocks and Iranian pottery. The most impressive British artefacts, such as the relics found in the Sutton Hoo longship, are discretely tidied away in a fairly anonymous corner, almost like they’re an embarrassment.

As such, the whole place now feels like a bit of a looter’s stash, and that’s unlikely to ever change since the British Museum Act 1963 makes it illegal to return many of the foreign artefacts to their original countries once they have entered the collection.

So I’ve been less often of late, but that didn’t stop us dropping in to check out the late night opening on Friday, when around half of the galleries stay open until 20h30, and the Great Court welcomes visitors until 23h. You don’t get to see everything, but it is a great time to visit. There are few tourists and no school groups, and you can still get in to the most impressive and controversial exhibits, including those mentioned above.

Despite the morals of having all this plunder on display, the British Museum is a great institution, and the late night openings make for an interesting evening out. It’s just a shame the description couldn’t really be any more inaccurate if it tried. There’s very little British about it.

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london, museum, british+museum

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 1:39 pm and is filed under Journal, London. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.