The Museum

Tuesday, 27 January 8:00pm

In the British Museum’s Great Court a spectacular 18 foot image of the Hindu goddess Durga is being crafted from straw, clay and paint. Follow curator Sona Datta through the construction to the climax of the Durga Puja festival when the goddess is immersed in the River Thames – the first time such an event has ever happened in the UK.

Each year the BM takes thousands of objects to hundreds of cities so the public outside London can get up close and personal with star artefacts, and curators can try out new ideas. Jill Cook is in Norwich, encouraging visitors to break the great Museum taboo, and handle her million year old prehistoric hand-axes. Irving Finkel visits his touring exhibition in Leicester where the famous Lewis Chessmen are on display next to Ludo, Mancala and Monopoly.

The Museum: Beyond Bloomsbury will be repeated on ABC2 – Sunday, February 08 at 7:00pm

Tuesday, 20 January 2009 8:00pm

Meet Mike Neilson, artist and specialist replica maker at the British Museum, who’s responsible for making perfect copies of some of the Museum’s most important treasures. The film follows him casting an exact copy of a colossal Egyptian statue of pharaoh Amenhotep III. Mike’s work isn’t meant to fool anybody, but history is littered with objects intended to deceive. Down in the basement curator John Taylor examines a collection of what seem to be mummified Egyptian animals, but x-rays reveal an entirely different story. Meanwhile, curators from the Museum’s Middle Eastern department are called on by customs to help sort out a possible case of smuggling.

The Museum: Things Aren’t What They Seem will be repeated on ABC2 – Sunday, Febuary 1 at 7:00pm

Tuesday, 13 January 2009 8:00pm

The backrooms of the British Museum are bristling with sleuths.

This week on The Museum, grey-bearded Irving Finkel, an expert in the world’s oldest writing, is called to Scotland Yard to help the police with their enquiries.

In the museum’s laboratory, Rebecca Stacey is hunting for a whiff of opium in a small pot three and a half thousand years old.

And Colin McEwan is trying to crack a code, the silent language of the Nasca, the ancient and mysterious South American tribe, famous for etching huge symbols in the Peruvian desert. Colin thinks the key to these symbols lies in some dusty boxes on the museum’s shelves.

The Museum: Old Pots And Puzzles will be repeated on ABC2 – Sunday, January 25 at 7:00pm

Tuesday, 6 January, 8:00pm

In this episode of The Museum a curator has a stint in jail. The BM wants to inspire people who don’t usually visit the collections, so they’re taking drugs to Pentonville Prison – all safely contained in an art installation. Meanwhile Venetia Porter, a five-foot, shaggy-haired whirlwind, is being the guinea pig for another new policy. The Museum wants to show how present cultures are just as important as the past, and her ambitious exhibition of modern art from the Middle East brings together artists from across religious and political divides. Venetia likes being a guinea pig, but will her exhibition be a success?

The Museum: Curators Of The Here And Now will be repeated on ABC2 – Sunday, January 18 at 7:00pm

Tuesday, 23 December, 8:00pm

Billed as one of the greatest shows on earth, where else can you experience stories from every culture ever to inhabit the planet? All under one gigantic roof, it’s London’s history hot spot – the British Museum.

For the first time, led by the extraordinary people who work here, we go beyond the museum’s stately galleries to discover a labyrinth of millions of artefacts and to see new exhibitions in the making.

The BM is Britain’s second most popular visitor attraction, only Blackpool Pleasure Beach receives more visitors. It takes a 200-strong team to look after everyone, and this week they’re preparing for the Museum’s major blockbuster exhibition of the year.

A collection of 90 drawings by Michelangelo are being brought together in one place for the first time since they left the artist’s studio 400 years ago. Hugo Chapman, is suffering agonies. Will his show live up to the hype? Will it draw the crowds? And will there be the all important approval of the critics?

The Museum: Putting On A Blockbuster will be repeated on ABC2 – Sunday, January 04 at 7:00pm

Tuesday, 23 December at 08:00pm on ABC

Billed as one of the greatest shows on earth, where else can you experience stories from every culture ever to inhabit the planet? All under one gigantic roof, it’s London’s history hot spot – the British Museum.

For the first time, led by the extraordinary people who work here, we go beyond the museum’s stately galleries to discover a labyrinth of millions of artefacts and to see new exhibitions in the making.

The BM is Britain’s second most popular visitor attraction, only Blackpool Pleasure Beach receives more visitors. It takes a 200-strong team to look after everyone, and this week they’re preparing for the Museum’s major blockbuster exhibition of the year.

A collection of 90 drawings by Michelangelo are being brought together in one place for the first time since they left the artist’s studio 400 years ago. Hugo Chapman, is suffering agonies. Will his show live up to the hype? Will it draw the crowds? And will there be the all important approval of the critics?

The Museum: Putting On A Blockbuster will be repeated on ABC2 – Sunday, January 04 at 7:00pm

Tuesday, 16 December at 08:00pm on ABC

Billed as one of the greatest shows on earth, where else can you experience stories from every culture ever to inhabit the planet? All under one gigantic roof, it’s London’s history hot spot – the British Museum.

For the first time, led by the extraordinary people who work here, we go beyond the museum’s stately galleries to discover a labyrinth of millions of artefacts and to see new exhibitions in the making.

As well as caring for over 7 million historic treasures, the British Museum has a 250-year-old, grade one listed building to look after. From the top of the great glass roof to the pit beneath the main gates, this program tracks how the BM is constantly being fixed, restored and upgraded to keep London’s history hot spot up to the mark.

Beneath the main gates, engineers-turned-detectives restore its unique mechanism, an invasion of pigeons gets short shrift from a hawk, but some jobs can only be done by the abseiling maintenance men.

The Museum: Bursting At The Seams will be repeated on ABC2 – Sunday, December 28 at 7:00pm

Tuesday, 09 December at 08:00pm

Billed as one of the greatest shows on earth, where else can you experience stories from every culture ever to inhabit the planet? All under one gigantic roof, it‟s London’s history hot spot – the British Museum.

For the first time, led by the extraordinary people who work here, we go beyond the museum’s stately galleries to discover a labyrinth of millions of artefacts and to see new exhibitions in the making.

The British Museum wants to bring some of China’s Terracotta Army to London – but will they get the warriors they want, and how much will it all cost? They’re also facing the challenge of shifting 30 tonnes of enormous, fragile and irreplaceable works of art from London to Shanghai and with remarkable access to a truly extraordinary set of events.

Back in the BM, a delicate operation is underway. This episode of The Museum follows the BM’s ‘heavy mob’ as they oversee the removal of some of the most precious objects in the collection, while trying to ensure that the ancient alabaster Assyrian reliefs reach the other side of the world intact.

The Museum: The BM Goes East will be repeated on ABC2 – Sunday, December 21 at 7:00pm

Tuesday, 02 December 2008
08:00pm

Billed as one of the greatest shows on earth, where else can you experience stories from every culture ever to inhabit the planet? All under one gigantic roof, its London’s history hot spot – The British Museum.

For the first time, led by the extraordinary people who work here, we go beyond the museum’s stately galleries to discover a labyrinth of millions of artefacts and to see new exhibitions in the making.

Iron Age bodies preserved in a bog, Sudanese sacrifice victims, and 40 or so mummies – they’re just a few of the 8,000 plus body parts held in the British Museum.

They all help tell us about the past, but do human remains belong in a museum?

In The Museum: Bodies of Knowledge, we meet two young Tasmanian Aborigines who have come to London to reclaim the remains of their ancestors that have been in the Museum’s collection for 125 years. It’s an historic occasion. The BM is the first national museum to hand back human remains since British law was changed in 2004.

The debate about human remains and their place in museums is being driven by indigenous people who object to their ancestors’ remains being held in museums around the world.

The Museum: Bodies of Knowledge will be repeated on ABC2 – Sunday, December 14 at 7:00pm

Tuesday, 25 November 2008
8.00pm

Billed as one of the greatest shows on earth, where else can you experience stories from every culture ever to inhabit the planet? All under one gigantic roof, it’s London’s history hot spot – the British Museum.

For the first time, led by the extraordinary people who work here, we go beyond the museum’s stately galleries to discover a labyrinth of millions of artefacts and to see new exhibitions in the making.

Narrated by Ian McMillan, The Museum takes a behind-the-scenes look at the British Museum.

In the first episode, take a behind-the-scenes look at the Museum’s busy Conservation Department as they treat the Hellenistic bronze sculpture of a youth, affectionately known as ‘Charlie’, and restore some of the finest ancient Egyptian wall paintings from the tomb of Nebamun.

The Museum: Taking Care Of The Past will be repeated on ABC2 – Sunday, December 07 at 7:00pm