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Robert Neil MacGregor (born 16 June 1946) is a British art historian and former museum director. He was editor of the ''
Burlington Magazine ''The Burlington Magazine'' is a monthly publication that covers the fine and decorative arts of all periods. Established in 1903, it is the longest running art journal in the English language. It has been published by a charitable organisation s ...
'' from 1981 to 1987, then Director of the
National Gallery The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director ...
, London, from 1987 to 2002, Director of the British Museum from 2002 to 2015, and founding director of the
Humboldt Forum The Humboldt Forum is a museum dedicated to human history, art and culture, located in the Berlin Palace on the Museum Island in the historic centre of Berlin. It is in honour of the Prussian scholars Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt. Considere ...
in Berlin until 2018.


Biography

Neil MacGregor was born in
Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...
to two medical doctors, Alexander and Anna MacGregor. He was educated at
Glasgow Academy The Glasgow Academy is a coeducational independent day school for pupils aged 3–18 in Glasgow, Scotland. In 2016, it had the third-best Higher level exam results in Scotland. Founded in 1845, it is the oldest continuously fully independent ...
and then read modern languages at New College, Oxford, where he is now an honorary fellow. The period that followed was spent studying philosophy at the
École Normale Supérieure École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, S ...
in Paris (coinciding with the events of May 1968), and as a law student at
Edinburgh University The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted ...
, where he received the Green Prize. Despite being called to the bar in 1972, MacGregor next decided to take an art history degree. The following year, on a
Courtauld Institute The Courtauld Institute of Art (), commonly referred to as The Courtauld, is a self-governing college of the University of London specialising in the study of the history of art and conservation. It is among the most prestigious specialist coll ...
(
University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...
) summer school in Bavaria, the Courtauld's director Anthony Blunt spotted MacGregor and persuaded him to take a master's degree under his supervision. Blunt later considered MacGregor "the most brilliant pupil he ever taught". From 1975 to 1981, MacGregor taught History of Art and Architecture at the
University of Reading The University of Reading is a public university in Reading, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1892 as University College, Reading, a University of Oxford extension college. The institution received the power to grant its own degrees in 192 ...
. He left to assume the editorship of ''
The Burlington Magazine ''The Burlington Magazine'' is a monthly publication that covers the fine and decorative arts of all periods. Established in 1903, it is the longest running art journal in the English language. It has been published by a charitable organisation s ...
''. He oversaw the transfer of the magazine from the
Thomson Corporation The Thomson Corporation was one of the world's largest information companies. It was established in 1989 following a merger between International Thomson Organisation Ltd (ITOL) and Thomson Newspapers. In 2008, it purchased Reuters Group to fo ...
to an independent not-for-profit company with charitable status.


Directorship of the National Gallery

In 1987 MacGregor became director of the
National Gallery The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director ...
in London. During his directorship, MacGregor presented three
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
television series on art: ''Painting the World'' in 1995, ''Making Masterpieces'', a behind-the-scenes tour of the National Gallery, in 1997 and ''Seeing Salvation'', on the representation of Jesus in western art, in 2000. He declined the offer of a knighthood in 1999, the first director of the National Gallery to do so.


Directorship of the British Museum

MacGregor was made director of the
British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
in August 2002, at a time when that institution was £5 million in deficit. He has been lauded for his "diplomatic" approach to the post, though MacGregor rejects this description, stating that "diplomat is conventionally taken to mean the promotion of the interests of a particular state and that is not what we are about at all". His tenure included exhibitions that were more provocative than the museum had previously shown and some told stories from perspectives that were less Eurocentric than previously, including a project about the Muslim Hajj. He sparked debate with his claim that the ancient Persian empire was greater than
Ancient Greece Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of Classical Antiquity, classical antiquity ( AD 600), th ...
. In 2010, MacGregor presented a series on
BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...
and the
World Service The BBC World Service is an international broadcasting, international broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC, with funding from the Government of the United Kingdom, British Government through the Foreign Secretary, Foreign Secretary's o ...
entitled ''
A History of the World in 100 Objects ''A History of the World in 100 Objects'' was a joint project of BBC Radio 4 and the British Museum, consisting of a 100-part radio series written and presented by British Museum director Neil MacGregor. In 15-minute presentations broadcast on ...
'', based on one hundred artefacts held in the British Museum's collection. From September 2010 to January 2011 the British Museum lent the ancient Persian
Cyrus Cylinder The Cyrus Cylinder is an ancient clay cylinder, now broken into several pieces, on which is written a declaration in Akkadian cuneiform script in the name of Persia's Achaemenid king Cyrus the Great. Kuhrt (2007), p. 70, 72 It dates from the 6th c ...
to an exhibition in Tehran, Iran. This was seen by at least a million visitors on the Museum's estimation, more than any loan exhibition to the United Kingdom had attracted since the ''Treasures of Tutankhamun'' exhibition in 1972. Holding tenure when the
Acropolis Museum The Acropolis Museum ( el, Μουσείο Ακρόπολης, ''Mouseio Akropolis'') is an archaeological museum focused on the findings of the archaeological site of the Acropolis of Athens. The museum was built to house every artifact found o ...
in Athens was completed, MacGregor followed previous Directors in arguing against returning the sculptures from the
Parthenon The Parthenon (; grc, Παρθενών, , ; ell, Παρθενώνας, , ) is a former temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, that was dedicated to the goddess Athena during the fifth century BC. Its decorative sculptures are considere ...
(the "
Elgin Marbles The Elgin Marbles (), also known as the Parthenon Marbles ( el, Γλυπτά του Παρθενώνα, lit. "sculptures of the Parthenon"), are a collection of Classical Greece, Classical Greek marble sculptures made under the supervision of th ...
") to Greece. A poll in 2014 suggested that more British people (37%) supported the marbles' restoration to Greece than opposed it (23%). MacGregor argued that it is the British Museum's duty to "preserve the universality of the marbles, and to protect them from being appropriated as a nationalistic political symbol", and that "there is no legal system in Europe that would challenge the ritish Museum'slegal title" to the works. The legal basis of various Ottoman documents, now lost, to which the British Museum has traditionally appealed in order to claim ownership of the sculptures is disputed. Under the directorship of MacGregor, the Museum rejected
UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...
mediation. In January 2008, MacGregor was appointed chairman of the World Collections programme, for training international curators at British museums. The exhibition ''The First Emperor'', focussing on
Qin Shi Huang Qin Shi Huang (, ; 259–210 BC) was the founder of the Qin dynasty and the first emperor of a unified China. Rather than maintain the title of " king" ( ''wáng'') borne by the previous Shang and Zhou rulers, he ruled as the First Empero ...
and including a small number of his
Terracotta Warriors The Terracotta Army is a collection of terracotta sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China. It is a form of funerary art buried with the emperor in 210–209 BCE with the purpose of protecting the emperor in ...
, was mounted in 2008 in the
British Museum Reading Room The British Museum Reading Room, situated in the centre of the Great Court of the British Museum, used to be the main reading room of the British Library. In 1997, this function moved to the new British Library building at St Pancras, London, ...
. That year MacGregor was invited to succeed Philippe de Montebello as the Director of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
in New York. He declined the offer as the Metropolitan charges its visitors for entry and is thus "not a public institution". As of 2015, MacGregor was paid a salary of between £190,000 and £194,999 by the British Museum, making him one of the 328 most highly paid people in the British public sector at that time. MacGregor retired from the post in December 2015 and was succeeded in spring 2016 by Hartwig Fischer, till then the director of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (''"Dresden State Art Collections"'').


Directorship of the Humboldt Forum

On 8 April 2015, MacGregor announced his retirement as Director of the British Museum. It was announced that MacGregor would become founding director and head of the management committee of the
Humboldt Forum The Humboldt Forum is a museum dedicated to human history, art and culture, located in the Berlin Palace on the Museum Island in the historic centre of Berlin. It is in honour of the Prussian scholars Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt. Considere ...
in Berlin, and that he would make recommendations to the German government on how the future museum can draw on the resources of the Berlin collections to "become a place where different narratives of world cultures can be explored and debated". The three-member management committee also includes the co-directors, archaeologist
Hermann Parzinger Hermann Parzinger is a German historian who is a specialist in the culture of the Scythians. He has been president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation since 1 March 2008 and the Executive President of Europa Nostra since 2018. Honours ...
and art historian Horst Bredekamp. One of MacGregor's proposals is to make the museum admission-free, based on the model of the British Museum. In 2018, MacGregor left the post.


Media projects

MacGregor has made many programmes for British television and radio. In the year 2000, he presented on television ''Seeing Salvation'', about how Jesus had been depicted in famous paintings. More recently, he has made important contributions on
BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...
, including ''
A History of the World in 100 Objects ''A History of the World in 100 Objects'' was a joint project of BBC Radio 4 and the British Museum, consisting of a 100-part radio series written and presented by British Museum director Neil MacGregor. In 15-minute presentations broadcast on ...
'' and, in 2012, a series of fifteen-minute programmes after ''
The World at One ''The World at One'', or ''WATO'' ("what-oh") for short, is BBC Radio 4's long-running lunchtime news and current affairs programme, produced by BBC News, which is currently broadcast from 13:00 to 13:45 from Monday to Friday. The programme de ...
'' called ''Shakespeare's Restless World'', discussing themes in the plays of
William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
. In September 2014 UK domestic transmission started of his similarly formatted series ''Germany: Memories of a Nation'' on BBC Radio 4, with a major supporting exhibition at the British Museum. This series did not limit itself to physical objects but places of memory, including for example the forest. In 2017, MacGregor hosted a BBC Radio Four series '' Living with the Gods'', on expressions of religious faith, liaising with Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Director of the
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, (CSMVS) originally named Prince of Wales Museum of Western India, is a museum in Mumbai (Bombay) which documents the history of India from prehistoric to modern times. It was founded during Briti ...
in Mumbai, on the presentation of world cultures. At the beginning of 2019, MacGregor presented a programme called "As Others See Us" on BBC Radio Four. This programme looked at how his own country (the United Kingdom) was seen by other countries around the world. In 2021, he gave a series of lectures at the “Chaire du Louvre” in Paris. The following year, MacGregor presented the BBC Radio 4 series ''The Museums That Make Us'' in which he visited local, regional, and city museums throughout the UK.


Personal life

MacGregor was listed in ''
The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publish ...
'''s 2007 list of "most influential gay people" and was single . On 4 November 2010, MacGregor was appointed to the Order of Merit by Queen
Elizabeth II Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during ...
. On 25 March 2013 MacGregor was appointed an Honorary Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) by the Governor-General of Australia
Quentin Bryce Dame Quentin Alice Louise Bryce, (née Strachan; born 23 December 1942) is an Australian academic who served as the 25th governor-general of Australia from 2008 to 2014. She is the first woman to have held the position, and was previously the ...
, "for service to promoting Australia and Australian art in the United Kingdom".


Awards

* 2015 Friedrich-Gundolf-Preis from the
Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung The Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung (in English German Academy for Language and Literature) was founded on 28 August 1949, on the 200th birthday of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt. It is seated in Darmstadt, ...
for ''A History of the World in 100 Objects'' and ''Germany: Memories of a Nation'' * 2015 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize, from the
British Academy The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars spa ...
for ''A History of the World in 100 Objects'' and ''Germany: Memories of a Nation''


Publications

* * * * * *


See also

*
List of directors of the British Museum The Director of the British Museum is the head of the British Museum in London, a post currently held by Hartwig Fischer. He is responsible for that institution's general administration and reports its accounts to the British Government. The ac ...


References


External links

* Lectur
"Identity Formation. The Role of Museums in the Creation and Inflection of National Narratives"
at LMU Munich
Collected news and commentary
at ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
''
Collected news and commentary
at ''
The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publish ...
''
A History of the World
''
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
'' and
The British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docume ...
* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Macgregor, Neil 1946 births Living people 20th-century Scottish historians 21st-century Scottish historians Academics of the University of Reading Alumni of New College, Oxford Alumni of the Courtauld Institute of Art Alumni of the University of Edinburgh British expatriates in Germany Directors of museums in the United Kingdom Directors of the British Museum Directors of the National Gallery, London École Normale Supérieure alumni Fellows of New College, Oxford Honorary Officers of the Order of Australia British gay writers LGBT historians Members of the Faculty of Advocates Members of the Order of Merit People educated at the Glasgow Academy People from Glasgow Scottish art historians Scottish curators Honorary Fellows of the British Academy Elgin Marbles