Neil MacGregor to step down as head of British Museum

Neil MacGregor is to step down as director of the British Museum after 13 years at the head of the UK's most popular visitor attraction.

Announcing plans to leave the museum at the end of December, the 68-year-old said he was not moving on to a full-time role elsewhere but would combine advisory work at museums in Berlin and Mumbai with a BBC radio series about faith and society.

The former National Gallery director was credited with injecting new energy into a historic institution and bringing clarity to its role, exposing the modern relevance of its treasures to a wider public through books and series such as The History of the World in 100 Objects, and Germany: Memories of a Nation.

He said working at the museum had been the "greatest privilege" of his professional life and cited the completion of a £135m building programme as a good moment to retire. "The new building has been completed, so we at last have proper exhibition space, new conservation and scientific facilities, and first-class accommodation for our growing research activities."

Tipped last year as the potential first director of the Humboldt-Forum in Berlin, which is being built inside the facade of the Berlin Palace, Mr MacGregor instead revealed on Wednesday that he would chair an advisory board to Monika Grutters, German minister of culture, on the project.

He will also advise "on the presentation of world cultures" at the CSMVS Museum in Mumbai, which he said had become "one of the finest and most active museums in South/Southeast Asia".

Mr MacGregor's retirement comes at a moment of turnover in the upper echelons of UK museums. The Prado's Gabriele Finaldi is due to take over from Nicholas Penny at the National Gallery in August, while Nicholas Cullinan has been appointed to the top job at the National Portrait Gallery. Penelope Curtis last week announced that she was stepping down as director of Tate Britain to head the Gulbenkian museum in Lisbon.

Museum experts said the field for Mr MacGregor's replacement was wide open. Possible contenders include Tim Potts, director of the J Paul Getty Museum since 2012; Tim Knox, who succeeded Mr Potts at the Fitzwilliam museum in Cambridge; Nick Merriman at the Manchester Museum; or Simon Thurley, head of English Heritage.

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Sir Richard Lambert, chairman of the trustees, said Mr MacGregor had been "an outstanding director of the British Museum and has made an extraordinary contribution to public life in the UK and beyond . . . We are now starting the process of looking for someone to take on what will be one of the best and most challenging jobs of its kind in the world."

Mr MacGregor expanded the museum's programme of lending its objects, handing over 5,000 objects to other institutions last year. But he sparked controversy with his decision to send Ilissos, one of the Parthenon marbles, to the Hermitage Museum in Russia.

Maurice Davies, a partner at the Museums Consultancy and former head of policy at the Museums Association, said challenges remained at the British Museum over international engagement, including over the marbles. "Neil's taken things a long way but there are still some enormous issues about the position the British Museum occupies in the world because of its history . . . It needs someone who can gently take it in a more conciliatory direction."

Mr MacGregor presided over steady increases in visitor numbers: the museum last year welcomed 6.7m people, 59 per cent more than when he took over in 2002-03. But like all museum directors, he has had to manage deep public funding cuts since the coalition government came to power.

Blockbuster shows under his watch included "The First Emperor: China's Terracotta Army" in 2007; "Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum" in 2013; and last year's "Vikings: life and legend", the first to be housed in the new northwest wing. "Ice age art" attracted 90,000 visitors, more than doubling its 40,000 target.

Brought up in Glasgow, Mr MacGregor studied at Oxford and Edinburgh universities, the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. He was editor of the Burlington Magazine before becoming director of the National Gallery in 1987.

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