|
Neil MacGregor will speak to directors and curators at twenty museums across the country about the role museums play in society
Lauren Heath-Jones | Planet Attractions | 17 Feb 2022
Neil MacGregor is the former director of both the National Gallery and the British Museum Credit: CC BY-SA 4.0 Lesekreis via Wikimedia
Former National Gallery and British Museum director Neil MacGregor is set to host a new BBC Radio 4 series exploring the role museums play in their communities.
Called The Museums That Make Us, the series will consist of twenty 15-minute episodes where MacGregor will travel to different museums across the country and speak to directors and curators about the challenges they are currently facing.
In each episode, MacGregor will invite the museum’s curator to choose an item from its collection, which they feel explains the museum’s purpose and relationship with its audience. Featured organisations include the national museums of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as institutions in Liverpool, Birmingham and Leeds.
“What’s going in our museums today is at once challenging and exciting, and it can only really be understood by visiting as many as possible and finding out how they have approached what is a vital role in providing a sense of local, regional and national identity,” MacGregor said.
Radio 4 commissioner Richard Knight, said: “[Museums] find themselves on the frontline of contemporary debates about our past. As well as guiding us towards some extraordinary collections, right across the UK, this is a chance for Neil to help us think more deeply about the role of these important and valuable places in curating our shared history.”
The show will launch on Radio 4 on March 7, 2022, and will be broadcast on weekdays at 1:45pm. It will also be available on BBC Sounds as a podcast.
Museums and galleries
|
|
Storm surge: How Chimelong Spaceship’s award-winning and record-breaking Bermuda Storm was brought to life
|
