The purpose of the British Museum, the constant purpose
when parliament created the museum in 1753 was perfectly simple.
Every citizen was to be able to explore the whole world in one building.
In Montague House, in the building on this site
which parliament brought in the 1750's
were to be gathered things from all round the world.
The collection was to be aimed at universality
and to be open free of charge to all studious and curious persons; native and foreign.
Perfectly simple, the whole world could study the whole world
in one building in London.
That remains the purpose, that's what it's about.
It's one of the very few buildings anywhere in the world
where you could even think of studying the world, thinking about the whole world.
Certainly the only place in Europe where the whole world is still under one roof.
1750's, the only way you could think of this was really as a private house
and what the British Museum was,
was effectively the library of a gentleman's house.
Where you had prints and drawings, you had coins,
you had antiquities, you had everything, books of course
that let you think about the world.
And so they brought a private house,
the Duke of Montague's house on the edge of London
and decided that anybody could ask to come to see it.
You simply had to write to ask
and an appointment would be made,
and you would get your card
and it would tell you when you could come to see the collection,
when you could call on it.
And it reminded you very firmly that this was in no sense to be a monetary transaction
and no money was to be given to the servants.
Which is still the case today.
And you were received at the house,
as you would except by the housekeeper,
and here is the first employee of the British Museum.
Mary Bygrave who let you in and then you were taken round by the curator.
That was then, it was totally revolutionary.
The idea of a collection that the citizens could see,
as a right whenever they chose in the terms then pervading.
Everything changed of course after 1815,
the new post-Napoleonic view of how a society should organise public collections.
And Montague house was pulled down,
and the new building put up, that you know today.
And opened to everybody, and everything was here.
This is what you found inside.
Just a reminder, this was the whole world.
It was natural history as well as everything else,
as well as the library.
This caused a great problem of course,
the stuffed giraffes were particularly popular with children,
who pulled them apart.
And so the British Museum didn't allow children in to start with
because of the damage they did to stuffed animals.
But that was changed later by having better brought up children,
that's what the Victorians were for!
And sending the stuffed animals off to South Kensington,
where they remain in the Natural History Museum.
The museum was now recognisably a public museum
in the way we could imagine it today.
And the public was of course well behaved,
as you can see a beautiful brought up child admiring the antiquities of Egypt.
And it went on until of course the great change was 1851,
the great exhibition and for the first time mass tourism of a cultural sort hits Britain.
In 1851 all the London museums attendances soar and it's continued.
This was then.
This is today.
People queuing up to get into the Egyptian gallery in the Great Court,
and you can see through the window at the top,
queuing up to get on further into the Parthenon galleries.
This is a perfectly ordinary summer day,
and once you get in to the Egyptian gallery,
this is what it now looks like,
and this of course is wonderful.
The world is coming to look at the world as was always intended
and there coming to look at this unique assemblage of the cultures of humanity.
And the building is stretched, and this is of course the question.
We have always existed to enable people to look at objects carefully,
to think about them, to discuss them, to draw them,
to admire them or to walk past them and neglect them,
whatever they choose.
To use this collection as the private collection of every citizen,
that's what its about.
This is not a royal collection in the continental sense,
graciously opened to the citizen,
this is the private collection of every citizen who wants to come and use it.
And last year nearly seven million did.
The building, you all know in the summer is really struggling to handle these crowds,
but what experience are the crowds getting of the object,
how can they interrogate the objects.
What do we do about this to help them better engage with the collection that the trustee's
hold for them.
The building has changed steadily over the years.
The crowds not only come to visit the collection,
they come as you can see to have lunch on the steps.
This will become even worse I suspect once we move on to any kind of free wifi.
The steps will become impassable.
And what we're looking at is really how do we go to the next stage of a building
that has constantly had to re-think itself to achieve its purpose.
From Montague House in the 1750's
to the first Smirke building of the 1820's with the classical portico that you know today,
and the rough rectangle that you can still see.
To the building by the end of the nineteenth century
with the reading room in the middle of the courtyard
and greatly expanded at the north.
The library followed the stuffed animals in 2000,
and the reading room is now as you know no longer a reading room.
The space that was in the middle is available for other purposes.
And the latest change in the buildings,
earlier this year we opened on the north side of the building,
new spaces for conservation and scientific work
and for the research collection.
That's a very brief overview of the history of the building.
A building that has changed steadily in two hundred and fifty years,
but always with the same purpose of allowing people to look at the collection held for
their benefit,
and how we go on doing that is the question for the next few months.