The Museum

2007
The Museum

Seasons & Episodes

  • 1

EP1 Taking Care Of The Past May 10, 2007

Focusing on the conservators who care for some of the BM's most important and fragile treasures.

EP2 Bodies Of Knowledge May 17, 2007

Iron Age bodies preserved in a bog, Sudanese sacrifice victims and 40 or so mummies are just a few of the 8000 plus body parts held in the British Museum. They all help tell us about the past, but do human remains belong in a museum? Two young Tasmanian aboriginals have come to London to reclaim the remains of their ancestors, that have been in the Museum's collection for 125 years. It's an historic occasion. The BM is the first National Museum to hand back human remains since British law was changed in 2004.

EP3 The BM Goes East May 24, 2007

The BM wants to bring some of China's Terracotta Army to London, but will they get the warriors they want, and how much will it all cost? The BM is also facing the challenge of shifting 30 tonnes of enormous, fragile and irreplaceable works of art from London to Shanghai. This episode follows the BM's 'heavy mob' as they try to ensure that the ancient, alabaster, Assyrian reliefs reach the other side of the world intact.

EP4 Bursting At The Seams May 31, 2007

This programme tracks how the BM is constantly being fixed, restored and upgraded to keep it up to the mark.

EP5 Putting On A Blockbuster Jun 07, 2007

A collection of 90 drawings by Michelangelo are being brought together in one place for the first time since they left the artists studio over 400 years ago.

EP6 Shopping For Posterity Jun 14, 2007

The collections of the British Museum don't stand still, but funding for new acquisitions is in crisis. The money allocated to new purchases has decreased from around a million pounds a year in the 1980s to just £100,000 today. This programme follows curator Chris Spring's mission to buy La Bouche du Roi, an anti-slavery installation made of petrol cans. He can't afford it without help from the Art Fund, but will his pitch result in success? Meanwhile Philip Attwood is on a Rotterdam barge buying contemporary medals, and Judy Rudoe receives a Soviet style gift from the modern entrepreneurial Russian industry.

EP7 Curators of the Here and Now Jun 21, 2007

A curator has a stint in jail. The BM wants to inspire people who don't usually visit the collections, so they're taking drugs to Pentonville Prison - all safely contained in an art installation. Meanwhile, Venetia Porter, a five-foot, shaggy-haired whirlwind, is being the guinea pig for another new policy. The Museum wants to show how present cultures are just as important as the past, and her ambitious exhibition of modern art from the Middle East brings together artists from across religious and political divides. Venetia likes being a guinea pig, but will her exhibition be a success?

EP8 Old Pots And Puzzles Jul 12, 2007

The backrooms of the British Museum are bristling with sleuths. Irving Finkel, an expert in the world's oldest writing, is called to Scotland Yard to help the police with their enquiries. In the museum's laboratory, Rebecca Stacey is hunting for a whiff of opium in a small pot three and a half thousand years old. And Colin McEwan is trying to crack a code, the silent language of the Nasca, the ancient and mysterious South American tribe, famous for etching huge symbols in the Peruvian desert. Colin thinks the key to these symbols lies in some dusty boxes on the museum's shelves.

EP9 Things Aren't What They Seem Jul 26, 2007

Mike Neilson is an artist and specialist replica maker at the British Museum, he's responsible for making perfect copies of some of the Museum's most important treasures. The film follows him casting an exact copy of a colossal Egyptian statue of pharaoh Amenhotep III. Mike's work isn't meant to fool anybody, but history is littered with objects intended to deceive. Down in the basement curator John Taylor examines a collection of what seem to be mummified Egyptian animals, but x-rays reveal an entirely different story. Meanwhile, curators from the Museum's Middle Eastern department are called on by customs to help sort out a possible case of smuggling.

EP10 Beyond Bloomsbury Aug 02, 2007

In the British Museum's Great Court a spectacular 18 foot image of the Hindu goddess Durga is being crafted from straw, clay and paint. This programme follows curator Sona Datta through the construction to the climax of the Durga Puja festival when the goddess is immersed in the River Thames - the first time such an event has ever happened in the UK. Each year the BM takes thousands of objects to hundreds of cities, so the public outside London can get up close and personal with star artifacts, and curators can try out new ideas. Jill Cook is in Norwich, encouraging visitors to break the great Museum taboo, and handle her million year old prehistoric hand-axes. Irving Finkel visits his touring exhibition in Leicester where the famous Lewis Chessmen are on display next to Ludo, Mancala and Monopoly.
5.5| 0h30m| en| More Info
Released: 10 May 2007 Ended
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Synopsis

The Museum is British television documentary series. It is a behind-the-scenes look at the British Museum, narrated by Ian McMillan and first broadcast on BBC Two on Thursdays at 7.30pm from 10 May 2007. It is produced by BBC Wales. It is in 10 half-hour parts. There is an accompanying hardback book by Rupert Smith.

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