Irving Finkel

So it means that we serve two very important things.

horizons one is that we represent as far as we can the whole world with no injudicious attention paid to any one or other culture that they're all to us one

So there's no favoring any religious group, any country group, anything of the kind.

It's the human species.

We try to tell the narrative of, in its own right, and how it overlaps with,

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.