British Museum set to launch controversial revamp competition

Challenging architects to reimagine a third of the Bloomsbury museum’s galleries, the contest is part of an ambitious decade-long renovation masterplan unveiled late last year and billed as one of the ‘most significant cultural redevelopment projects ever undertaken’.

The contest will focus on the museum’s ‘Western Range’, which currently hosts collections of Ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman artifacts. Key aims include the ‘introduction of contemporary architecture and innovative gallery displays, alongside sensitivity towards the need to respect and restore the highly significant and celebrated listed buildings on the site’.

The competition is likely to be controversial given it is underpinned by the British Museum's new ten-year partnership with fossil fuel giant BP, which will provide £50 million over the next decade to help deliver the museum’s redevelopment masterplan.

Charlie Mayfield, chair of the British Museum’s Masterplan committee, said: ‘The British Museum is one of the largest and most visited cultural institutions in the world but some of its buildings are over 200 years old and in urgent need of refurbishment.

‘That’s why the masterplan is so essential – and it’s exciting to be moving forward with our plans.’

A contract notice for a procurement consultant to manage the competition went live late last month and remains open for applications until 2 February.

According to the notice - which estimates the contract value at £100,000 – the winner will host and run a restricted contest procedure under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015. The evaluation methodology for the appointment of the design team has already been developed and approved by the museum’s masterplan committee.

The contest seeks to receive the ‘most exciting proposals from across the globe, with a particular focus on expertise in sustainability’.

In recent months, the museum - which is chaired by former chancellor George Osborne - has faced growing calls for the return of the Elgin Marbles to Greece and become embroiled in a scandal over 2,000 missing antiquities from its collections, something which resulted in the resignation of the museum’s director, Hartwig Fischer, last summer.

However, the row over its deal with BP may even eclipse these controversies.

In recent years, BP and other oil and gas companies have been increasingly shunned by Britain’s cultural industries with the Tate, the National Portrait Gallery and Royal Shakespeare Company among those institutions turning down such sponsorship.

When the British Museum announced its partnership with BP late last year trustee Muriel Gray - the former chair of the Macintosh School of Art in Glasgow - quit, while Doug Parr, the UK policy director for Greenpeace, said the deal 'must surely be one of the biggest, most brazen greenwashing sponsorship deals the sector has ever seen.'

The announcement of the upcoming competition comes two years after the museum named four architects on a £45 million construction consultancy services framework: Avanti Architects, Dannatt Johnson Architects, Nex Architecture and Wright & Wright Architects.

The 100,000m² museum was constructed during the early to mid-19th century. It has around 3,500 different rooms and features more than eight million items in its permanent collection.

Stanton Williams completed a new Albukhary Foundation Gallery of the Islamic World at the British Museum in 2019.

In 2014, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners completed the museum’s World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre extension, while Foster + Partners’ transformation of the museum’s Great Court opened in 2000.