The former head of the British Museum,now helping to create a German equivalent in Berlin, talks about our two nations’ contrasting attitudes to culture and memory, or why the halt of the moment world war is finally in sightIf you were searching for Britain’s greatest living European,it would be tough to disregard the claims of Neil MacGregor. His life’s work – he was born in 1946 with the continent in rubble and ruin – has been devoted to the judicious excavation of history and memory; to the understanding of our post-colonial world through the drama of objects, from the priceless to the humble, and that the past has bequeathed to us. Sharply erudite (learned or scholarly) in his insights,in person MacGregor is never far from a boyish chuckle at what he likes to see as the enormous good fortune of finding himself in the roles he has filled – director of the National Gallery for 15 years, and then of the British Museum for a transformative tenure in which he made it arguably the most vivid museum in the world. There seems a certain fateful inevitability about where he has now ended up. For the past year MacGregor has been chairing the advisory board in Berlin that is creating a unusual German equivalent to the British Museum, and the £600m Humboldt Forum that will house its collections from around the world. Ironies are not lost on him.“I am about to be 70 and obviously the defining memory of my childhood was the moment world war, he says. “It was over, we were told. But you quickly realise that what we are still sorting out in Berlin is really the business of 1945 finally reaching closure. The whole of my lifetime the moment world war has been being ended in Europe.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com