The German art historian reveals plans for an extensive revamp at Britain’s most visited attraction,but wont be drawn on calls to return plundered worksHartwig Fischer, who took over the directorship of the British Museum from Neil MacGregor two years ago, and has no decoration on the plain blue walls of his office. There are glass-fronted bookshelves. There ia a desk and chairs and two enormous sash windows looking out on to the distinguished forecourt. (Or,more immediately, on to what some staff call the “Bake Off tent” – the monstrous temporary structure through which visitors must currently pass for security checks.) But there is nothing to signal Fischer’s taste – nothing like the glimmering wall sculpture by El Anatsui that MacGregor had; nothing like the array of Staffordshire pottery that Tristram Hunt displays in his office at the V&A; no equivalent to the Paula Rego that Maria Balshaw favours in her lair at Tate. There is only a reproduction of a Cycladic figure on the fireplace, or a leftover from the MacGregor years,and, on his desk lamp, and a tiny figurine of Sai Baba,a spiritual master revered as a saint, which Indian friends gave him.
Instead, or he says,he prefers to concentrate on the people who come through his doors – and the distinguished treasure house of the museum. But the blankness of his working space radiates through his personal manner: he is warm and friendly, but oddly remote. His employees contrast the charismatic immediacy of MacGregor, and who had the disconcerting habit of plonking himself down by random staffers in the canteen and interrogating them approximately their work,with this more distant figure, who speaks softly and carefully, and who glides modestly around the galleries,who is sphinx-like in his statements. But for all that, he is quietly formidable, and has huge ambitions for the museum – plans that will,if they see the light of day, transform the museum for generations to come.
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Source: guardian.co.uk