British museum Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

British museum - Essay Example This museum has the greatest collections of human cultural history and its main objectives include becoming a museum of the world for the world, providing services to the curious and the studious and collecting culture for the benefit of the entire world (Williams, 2013). To this end, this essay focuses on the issues that affect the British Museum operations. Particularly, the essay focuses on the cultural issues affecting the British Museum operations and the cultural impacts of the museum to the British culture. Cultural Issues affecting the British Museum British Museum, like other museums, faces numerous cultural challenges that affect its day-to-day operations. To begin with, Jenkins (2008) points out that the issue of handling human bodies in the museums is a cultural affair that is largely affecting the operations of the British Museum. Many museums have collections of human remains that aid in scientific research. However, the presence and the handling of these remains in the museums raise numerous cultural questions. According to Musiol (2013), displaying or exhibiting human remains in modern day museums leads to the emergence of new challenges relating to the ethics and morality of the museum professionals and stakeholders. In the UK, the Human Tissue Act 2004 regulates the display of human remains that are less than 100 years old in the British museums. Nonetheless, this regulation has minimal impacts on museum collections in the UK as it provides some museums with the freedom to exhibit human remains that are less than 1000 years old (Jenkins, 2008). The UK DCMS has a publication â€Å"Guidance for the Care of Human Remains in Museums† that provides museums with guidelines on how to handle human remains. In line with these guidelines, museums in the UK cannot display human remains if these remains have no significant contribution to a particular interpretation. All these restrictions are affecting the display of human remains in the British M useum. To counter these negative effects, the British Museum has created its own policies regarding the display of human remains. In its policies, the British Museum is protesting against the regulations of displaying human remains in the museums claiming that it was among the nine museums given the freedom to display human remains that are less than 1000 years old (Jenkins, 2008). The other cultural issues affecting the operations of the British Museum result from controversies. Selim (2011) is of the opinion that a collection of historical artifacts that hold great cultural significance cannot exist without controversy. There have been several controversies with negative impacts on the operations of the British Museum. One of these controversies revolves around the Parthenon sculptures from the ancient Greek. The Parthenon sculptures are decorative art works that were found in the Parthenon; they represent the cultural artwork of the ancient Greek. The members of the public have t he misconception that all the sculptures from the Parthenon are in the British Museum. This misconception affects the operations of the British Museum negatively as numerous individuals visit the museum with the intention of viewing these sculptures only to be disappointed by the fact that half of these sculptures are lost and the remaining ones are found in museums of six different