Irving Finkel

its neighbors and how what it's learned from what came before all those features together is really what the concern of the museum is and of course to collect everything we has been to collect everything we can to tell those narratives and also to look after them according to scientific principle

So all those things at once are the task of the British Museum.

And the second horizon it serves is the unborn.

So babies yet to be born and their children and their children and their children.

And it seems to me that the task of the museum is of such cultural significance and such, so to speak, sacred validity that it shouldn't have to put up with people carping about this or that or saying museums are sinful and wicked.

and should be demolished, because the people who say these things don't really have any idea of actually what it really does stand for.

And it's a kind of lighthouse in a universe where we are surrounded by darkness, ignorance, stupidity, uninterest, disinterest, skepticism, ignorance, and so forth, about the very issues that we're interested in.

And it's one of the places in the world where you can talk about truth and beauty and elegance and intelligence without it being an affront to people who have none of those qualities and without it being a kind of speech that people shudder or they think you're being naive about it because those are the crucial things.

And also about religion, that we don't favour a religion and we don't sponsor a religion.

We try to look at them

for what they are and to assess their relationships and what they offer.

Perhaps less, with a less acerbity and less criticism than I would if I was the director.

I would try to put them down the wrong end of a microscope and look at them for what they are.

and what they have done, and what's been done in the names of religion.

You probably would never get away with that, but maybe one day that will be an important part, because it's a major contributive factor to what's happened to the human race, which is never really articulated.

sharply about what religion has done to us and where we might have been without it.

Because not having religion does not mean not having law or morality or sensitivity or consideration or love or any of those things.

None of those things depends on religion.

and those are the things which are important so i think it's um people say oh you say this because you work there and you know you're a curator you would say that that the british museum is a special place it's nothing to do with that it is actually a special place because you cannot point to another museum in the world with the same task for example the louvre is basically a museum of

art, basically a museum of art, not a museum of ideas.