Nicholas Cullinan, the director of the National Portrait Gallery, has been appointed to lead the British Museum, taking on a number of challenges at the world’s oldest national museum after a theft scandal and revelations of serious problems in its governance amid calls for action. To return the Parthenon marbles to Greece.
Cullinan led a major transformation at the National Portrait Gallery that won critical and public acclaim. “We believe it can achieve this and more at the British Museum on a larger scale as we undertake a once-in-a-generation redevelopment,” British Museum chairman George Osborne said in a statement.
Cullinan has served as a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and Tate Modern, where he worked on exhibitions. Henri Matisse: Cuttings. He studied art history at the Courtauld Institute.
In a statement, Cullinan said he wanted to build on the successes of the National Portrait Gallery and “collectively reinvent the British Museum for as many audiences as possible and for future generations”.
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