The British Museum announced on March 28 that it had appointed Nicholas Cullinan as its new director. Cullinan will replace Hartwig Fischer, who resigned after a theft scandal at the museum.
Nicholas Cullinan, the director of the UK’s National Portrait Gallery, becomes the new director of the British Museum amidst the theft scandal, hearings and an expected major refurbishment and extension.
The museum, which is in line for major redevelopment, has been run in the meantime by interim director Mark Jones.
Museum chairman George Osborne said Cullinan was chosen because he had shown “proven leadership” and oversaw the well-received recent renovation of the National Portrait Gallery.
Cullinan, an art historian who has led the National Portrait Gallery since 2015, was appointed to the role following the unanimous approval of the board of trustees and agreement of prime minister Rishi Sunak.
Cullinan takes over from interim director Mark Jones, who came out of retirement to steer the museum through its recent theft scandal, which led to the resignations of former director Hartwig Fischer and deputy director Jonathan Williams.
During his tenure at the National Portrait Gallery, Cullinan oversaw the most significant redevelopment in the institution’s history. The gallery reopened in 2023 following a three-year closure, with a complete rehang of the collection and a refurbishment that increased public space by a fifth.
He also led an innovative international collaboration with Getty to co-acquire Joshua Reynolds’s Portrait of Mai (c. 1776), the gallery’s largest-ever acquisition and the joint-largest in the UK.
Prior to that, Cullinan was a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and Tate Modern in London.
