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Neil MacGregor

Director, British Museum

Neil MacGregor became Director of the British Museum in August 2002. He was previously Director of the National Gallery, London, 1987-2002. He read French and German at New College, Oxford and studied philosophy at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. He took an LLB in Law at the University of Edinburgh and was called to the Scottish Bar. He studied 17th- and 19th-century art at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and from 1975 to 1981 he was a lecturer in the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Reading and a part-time lecturer at the Courtauld Institute of Art. In 1981 he became Editor of The Burlington Magazine.

He is a Fellow of New College, Oxford, an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy and an Honorary Member of the Royal Scottish Academy. He is a Member of the Board of Re:source, a Trustee of the Raad van Toezicht of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Chairman of the UNESCO Advisory Group of the Hermitage, St Petersburg, the Visiting Committee of the J Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, a member of the Board of Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich. From 1987-1997 he was Chairman of the UK National Museums Directors' Conference and of the European Commission Steering Committee for Multimedia access to European cultural patrimony. He has served on selection panels and juries concerned with the re-building of the Museuminsinsel, Berlin, the re-modelling of the Louvre and the re-organisation of the Venice museums. Mr MacGregor has also presented a number of television programmes.