Everything about Neil Macgregor totally explained
Robert Neil MacGregor (born
June 16,
1946 in
Glasgow,
Scotland) is an
art historian and museum director. He is the
Director of the British Museum and Chairman of World Collections, a British diplomatic post created in 2008.
Biography
Neil MacGregor was born in Glasgow to two doctors, Alexander and Anna MacGregor. At the age of nine he first saw
Salvador Dalí's
Christ of Saint John of the Cross, newly-acquired by Glasgow's
Kelvingrove Art Gallery, which apparently had a profound effect on him and sparked his lifelong interest in art. MacGregor read modern languages at
New College, Oxford, and is now an honorary fellow there. The period that followed was spent studying philosophy at the
École Normale Superieure in
Paris (coinciding with the historic strike of "
May '68"), and as a law student at
Edinburgh University, where he received the Green Prize. In 1972 he was called to the Bar. Finally, he studied for a
master's degree at the
Courtauld Institute of Art under
Anthony Blunt.
He taught History of Art and Architecture at the
University of Reading until he left to assume the position of editor of the
Burlington Magazine from
1981 until
1987, when he became a highly successful director of the
National Gallery in
London. At the National Gallery he was dubbed "Saint Neil", partly because of his popularity at that institution and partly because of his devout Christianity, and the nickname stuck after his departure from the Gallery. He was also the first director of the National Gallery to decline the offer of a knighthood. During his directorship MacGregor presented two
BBC television series on art:
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.
After reversing the fortunes of the National Gallery, he was made director of the
British Museum in
2002, at a time when the latter institution was in a financial crisis. MacGregor has thus far proved himself to be a diplomatic director of the British Museum, opening discussions with Greece about the
Elgin Marbles and sending curators to Iraq in 2003 to assess the damage done to the country's museums during the
Iraq War.
The Museum, a documentary series on the inner workings of the British Museum, aired on BBC Two in 2007.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Neil Macgregor'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://neil_macgregor.totallyexplained.com">Neil MacGregor Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
