International partnerships

Beyond the UK the Museum engages in a worldwide programme of sustainable partnerships, fulfilling its objective of being a museum of the world and for the world.

Memoranda of Understanding

The British Museum has been fortunate in finding partners worldwide who want to collaborate on exhibitions, skills sharing and research for mutual benefit. The Museum gains hugely through these relationships – making new friends and learning more about what the collection means from a multitude of different world perspectives.

Over the past two years the British Museum has initiated a series of reciprocal relationships with cultural organisations and governments worldwide, concentrating on research, mutual loans and professional exchanges.

These relationships have in many cases been formalised in Memoranda of Understanding (MOU), signed documents which express the desire of both parties to work together in particular areas for worldwide public benefit.

  • National Museums of Kenya
  • West African Museums Programme, Senegal
  • National Museum of China
  • National Palace Museum, China
  • Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Mali
  • Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture and the National Museum of Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
  • Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Mozambique
  • University of Ghana at Legon
  • Ministry of Culture of Ghana
  • Golden Stool (Asantehene) in Kumasi (Ghana)
  • Institute of Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia
  • National Museums of Zimbabwe (NMZ) in Harare

International partnerships

Here are some selected highlights of the British Museum’s international collaborations:

USA: North West Alaska

Iñupiaq Pictography. Over forty hunting records engraved on walrus ivory (c. 1780-1880) have been drawn, catalogued and scanned for web and CD-Rom access in collaboration with Native Alaskan communities.

Canada: Alert Bay

The long term loan of a Transformation Mask made in around 1920 to the U’mista Cultural Society Museum as part of the Museum’s programme to strengthen links with source communities worldwide and build relationships with the Namgis First Nation.

Iraq: Baghdad / USA: Pennsylvania

Ur on-line. A joint project of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and the British Museum, which together excavated the city of Ur in the 1920s and early 30s. The project aims to digitise the excavation archives and provide as much information about the finds from one of the most famous sites of ancient Iraq.

Ecuador: Agua Blanca

An interdisciplinary study of the environmental history, social and political organisation of the Pre-Hispanic Manteño (AD 800-1530) polities of coastal Ecuador. The project fostered the creation of a community site museum that has proved to be instrumental in ensuring protection of the region’s rich natural cultural heritage.

Chile: Patagonia

A research project addressing human adaptation at the southern tip of South America focusing on the archaeology of Elizabeth Island in the Magellan Straits, in partnership with the Universidad de Magallanes, Punta Arenas, Chile and the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina.

UK: London

The Ramesseum Papyri. A major new research programme into the unique papyrus archive of a priest-magician from a plundered 13th Dynasty tomb (c. 1700BC) found at the site of the mortuary temple of Ramesses II (the Ramesseum) in Western Thebes, Most of the papyri are in the Museum’s collection. The BM’s role is coordinating the necessary research in collaboration with specialists in Leipzig, Cambridge, Manchester, Oxford and Paris.

Egypt: Kom Firin

The Nile Delta region is threatened by the expansion of land for agricultural use and by illegal excavations. This project uses magnetometry survey to identify subsurface archaeological features on an endangered site.

Sudan: Fourth Cataract

The British Museum is involved in coordinating with Sudanese colleagues an international rescue excavation before the imminent flooding of land around the Fourth Cataract of the Nile in advance of the construction of a new dam.

Kenya: Nairobi

A ground-breaking exhibition undertaken by the National Museums using BM objects together with items from their own collections, revealing the East African and Indian Ocean context of Kenya’s cultures. Accompanied by a catalogue written by Kenyan and international scholars.

Lebanon: Sidon

Sidon was one of the most famous cities of the ancient Mediterranean. This archaeological project, undertaken in collaboration with the Lebanese Directorate General of Antiquities, is revealing important new information about the history of the town and its people from the late third millennium to the fifth century BC.

Iraq: Mosul

The Ashurbanipal Library Project is a collaboration between the University of Mosul in northern Iraq and the British Museum. The Museum has undertaken to supply the University with selected casts of the 25,000 cuneiform tablets in the Museum’s collection from the Library of Ashurbanipal, the world’s first great library. The project will systematically re-evaluate the collection in the light of modern scholarship. Eventually the University intends to establish a centre for study of Ashurbanipal’s Library in Mosul. The Museum will be closely involved in this project.

India: Arunachal Pradesh

The cultures of this geographically isolated state in north-east India have undergone enormous change in recent decades. Undertaken in collaboration with colleagues in Indian and British institutions, the project documents changes in textiles, painting, woodblock-printing, architecture and pilgrimage, providing contextual information for existing BM collections and new material. The project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, generated an exhibition which toured to three venues in India in collaboration with the British Council.

Malaysia: Kuala Lumpur

Mightier than the Sword at the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia (April-July 2004) was the expanded successor to the British Museum’s Writing Arabic exhibition of 2001. The exhibition included over 100 from the British Museum. Museum curators ran training sessions on display. In June 2005, the Museum’s Principal Designer was invited to organise a three-day workshop for curators at the National Museum of Malaysia: he subsequently advised on opportunities for re-planning the galleries and upgrading displays.

China, Korea and Japan

In the period 2004-2006, 2 million people saw the BM exhibition Treasures of the World’s Cultures in eight venues across three countries.

Pacific: Vanuatu

A series of workshops co-funded by the Australian government and undertaken in collaboration with the Vanuatu Cultural Centre aims to work with ni-Vanuatu women concerned to record, and to sustain, women’s knowledge and practice. The Museum is also working with ni-Vanuatu colleagues on a research project into changing indigenous textile traditions.