“Some of our greatest artifacts may be on display for the first time to the communities they originally came from,” said recently President of the British Museum George Osborne at the Foundation Trustees Annual Dinner.

A few months after Osborne’s statements about the possibility of an “agreement” with Greece for reunification Sculptors of the Parthenon, the appeal of the president of the museum to the people who hold the keys to the institution has become even clearer. “My message is: if you are ready to find common ground, then so are we.”

“We are listening to voices calling for restoration,” he said, adding that his goal is not to “dismantle” the institution built by previous generations. “I am sure that long-term partnerships can be realized,” he stressed. “It’s all part of our big change.”

“We are hearing voices calling for restoration,” said the chairman of the British Museum.

It is possible that in his four-page speech, Osborne did not mention Parthenon this time, but he did not hesitate to focus on one single question: how to change it British museum and from a “museum of the world” it will become a “museum of the world.” Faced with an environment that challenges the certainty of European Enlightenment and globalization, where great power nationalisms are resurgent and the cohesive fabric of societies is shattered, the answer, he says, must be one for the British Museum: “Become the world museum of our common humanity.”

In the same speech, the head of the museum also mentioned a major restoration program for the building of the institution, which will be presented in detail in the spring of 2023. This is the “Project Rosetta” – a program of modernizing the halls and repositioning the museum. collections, including a collection of Greek antiquities. The restoration of the museum, opened to the public in 1759, will take at least ten years, and it is not yet known where the collections and sculptures of the Parthenon will be moved until the work is completed.