Big Interview with Dr Nicholas Cullinan, director of the British Museum

We meet at Cliffe Castle in Keighley where a new British Museum exhibition Ice Age Art Now, a partnership project with Bradford 2025 City of Culture, has just opened. The exhibition presents artwork created by people living in Europe at the end of the last Ice Age, between 24,000 and 12,000 years ago, a period which saw an increase in the production of sculptures, drawings, jewellery and decorated tools and weapons. Many of the objects featured in the exhibition – such as an engraved drawing of a horse on bone, found at Creswell Crags in Derbyshire, and a bone pendant depicting a wolverine discovered at Grotte des Eyzies in the Dordogne in France – are not often on display because of their great age and fragility. It is a rare opportunity for local audiences to see these right on their doorstep. “We have great links with Bradford and this region and we wanted to be part of and to support City of Culture,” says Cullinan. “Those relationships are ongoing and are really important to us.”

The exhibition at Cliffe Castle is one of many partnerships and collaborations that the British Museum engages in around the country and internationally, with other museums, galleries and cultural institutions, as well as schools and with young people, a commitment which Cullinan is very keen to continue and build upon. “We are a national museum in terms of our constitution, with international scope and relevance, I take that role and responsibility very seriously,” he says. “We work with more than 200 partners around the country and lend around 2,000 objects every year. I would like us to become the most collaborative museum nationally and internationally – to be a lending library for the world. I want to focus on our founding principle that we are ‘for everyone.’”

Established in 1753 by an act of Parliament for the nation, the British Museum was the first public national museum and is the third most visited building in the UK, averaging around 6.5 million visitors a year, more than half of which are international visitors. Those figures are very encouraging but Cullinan understands that in an ever-changing world, full of competing distractions and entertainment, it’s wise not to take anything for granted. “If you love museums and heritage and culture, you are trying to preserve things and pass them on but you can’t assume that audiences will keep turning up,” he says. “There is that great quote from Italian writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa in his novel The Leopard – ‘if you want things to say as they are, things are going to have to change’. In order for things to thrive you have to very subtly evolve them. And you have to stay relevant.”

On that front there are plans afoot. Earlier this year architect Lina Ghotmeh was appointed to lead on the redesign of the Museum’s Western Range, an area of the building which makes up more than 35 percent of the museum’s display space and houses some of the most famous parts of the collection including the Rosetta Stone and the Parthenon sculptures. It will involve reimagining the gallery spaces and redisplaying the collections and has been described as ‘one of the biggest cultural renovation projects undertaken anywhere in the world.’ Cullinan is no stranger to these large-scale projects, while he was the director of the National Portrait Gallery, he oversaw a major redevelopment and rehang of the galleries, which has been widely praised. “Lina was chosen from more than 60 applicants from all around the world and she was the clear choice,” says Cullinan. “It’s really exciting to see what she will come up with.”

Born in America to British parents, Cullinan was four years old when the family returned to the UK and settled in Hebden Bridge where he grew up; his ties to West Yorkshire are still very strong. “I come back to visit all the time, my sister still lives here and I still think of this as home,” he says. Cliffe Castle was one of the museums and galleries he enjoyed visiting as a child. “I used to love coming here,” he says. “I remember visiting regularly, it was one of my go-to places. And I have very fond memories of the Brontë Parsonage Museum and Leeds Art Gallery.” He credits those childhood excursions with kickstarting his interest in and engagement with culture, arts and museums, setting him on the path to where he is today. “Those were my formative cultural experiences,” he says. “They were incredibly important and influential.”

He was relatively young, in his late thirties, when in 2015 he was appointed director of the National Portrait Gallery, where incidentally he had worked part-time as a visitor services assistant while he was studying History of Art at the Courtauld Institute, and he has had a pretty impressive career trajectory. Still only 47 years old he already has under his belt two of the most prestigious directorships in the UK arts and heritage sector. Was he always aiming high? “I am driven and I love what I do but there certainly wasn’t any ambitious grand plan,” he replies, laughing. “I had no particular expectations. By the time I finished my first degree at the Courtauld, I knew that I really enjoyed studying so I went on to do an MA and a PhD. Everything from there was one step at a time. I was very focused on what I was doing and living in the moment.”

Looking to the future, the exciting forthcoming developments at the British Museum and its ongoing, wide-ranging programmes, Cullinan is optimistic. “I am always heartened by seeing people of all ages queuing up outside the Museum every day,” he says. “Museums are about passing things on to the next generation and the reality is that you can always find ways around things with ingenuity and goodwill. There is a degree of deliberate optimism because otherwise you wouldn’t do things that might seem impossible. I think when times are tough culture matters even more because it is what gives people hope or a sense of belonging. Today there are so many echo chambers and so much division, we have an important role to play in providing another way of looking at things.”

Ice Age Art is at Cliffe Castle Museum, Keighley until September 14.