Neil MacGregor has been Director of the British Museum since August 2002 and has devoted particular attention to developing the Museum’s regional and international partnerships.

Mr MacGregor sits on the Board of the National Theatre and the International Advisory Board of the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. In both his current and his previous role as Director of the National Gallery, Neil worked closely with BBC radio and television to bring the collections to the widest possible public. Most recently, the British Museum and the BBC worked together on a project telling A History of the World in 100 objects. At the heart of this project was the British Museum/BBC Radio 4 series of a hundred 15-minute episodes, based on objects from the British Museum’s collection. This has been a platform for partnerships with museums across the UK and a wide programme of activity.

Neil 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 then decided to study 17th- and 19th-century art at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and for six years 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 arts periodical, The Burlington Magazine, and then in 1987 became Director of the National Gallery.

Alan Chong is director of the Asian Civilisations Museum and the Peranakan Museum – museums dedicated to exploring the historical connections among Asian cultures, and between Asia and the world. The Asian Civilisations museum is currently preparing new galleries in its historic building and two new wings. Among the exhibitions the museum has presented in recent years are Terracotta Warriors: The First Emperor and His Legacy; Enlightened Ways: The Many Streams of Buddhist Art in Thailand; and Devotion and Desire: Cross-Cultural Art in Asia.

Before coming to the Asian Civilisations Museum, Dr Chong was curator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. His areas of research are in cross-cultural art, artistic patronage, and the history of collecting.