BM director defends postponement of Jewish Culture Month event

The British Museum's director Nicholas Cullinan has spoken out after the institution came under fire for delaying a public lecture planned as part of Jewish Culture Month.

The talk on Ancient Israel and Judah was scheduled to take place last Thursday but was abandoned at short notice due to fears it would be disrupted by protesters over the Israel-Gaza conflict.

The museum said it had received “credible information†that a substantial proportion of attendees – between 25% and 50% – had booked on with the intention of disrupting the lecture.

The protesters were from Jewish Artists for Palestine, a group of “antizionist Jewish writers, visual and performance artists, filmmakers, designers, architects, and people working in the culture sector and creative industries in the UK†who support the Palestinian cause.

The decision to postpone the talk was condemned by public figures including the Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and the Jewish historians Simon Schama and Simon Sebag Montefiore, who said the museum should not have given in to the protesters.

Badenoch said: “Jewish Culture Month is meant to promote awareness of and celebrate Jewish culture in the UK. This decision achieves precisely the opposite. The government says it wants to combat antisemitism, it needs to tell publicly funded institutions like the British Museum to do what's necessary to put this event on.â€

The museum was also criticised for failing to defend free expression and the democratic right to protest. A statement from Jewish Artists for Palestine said “it is entirely legitimate to expect that a publicly funded museum would host conversations that reflect different points of viewâ€.

Cullinan said the event had become a “flashpoint in a wider national argument about protest, intimidation and the limits of free expressionâ€.

He said: “The British Museum, like every major public institution, is accustomed to protest. Indeed, protest is a healthy feature of democratic life.

“But there is a fundamental difference between protest outside an event and organised disruption within it intended to silence and overwhelm, especially at such an understandably difficult moment for the Jewish community in the UK.â€

Cullinan said framing the postponement as a retreat from free speech “misunderstands both the decision and the principle at stakeâ€.

“Freedom of expression does not require institutions to provide a platform for disruption,†he said. “Nor does it require organisers to knowingly place speakers, audiences or visitors in circumstances where a legitimate event cannot proceed safely and respectfully.

“The British Museum faced competing obligations. Thousands of visitors, including school groups, would have been in the building. Those attending the lecture had a reasonable expectation that they would be able to hear it and not unwittingly made a captive audience for another purpose.

“The curator delivering it had a right to do so without organised attempts to silence them. Balancing those responsibilities is not censorship; it is stewardship.â€

Cullinan said the deeper issues raised by the row extend “far beyond a single lectureâ€.

He said: “Across Britain, cultural institutions increasingly find themselves caught between opposing political pressures. The temptation is to interpret every operational decision through the lens of ideology. Yet not every decision is political. Sometimes it is simply an attempt to preserve the conditions under which genuine debate can occur.â€

Cullinan said the lecture would now go ahead “with a larger audience who will be able to listen to it without it being hijacked for another purposeâ€.

He said the BM remains committed to supporting Jewish Culture Month and to “presenting the full breadth of human historyâ€.

The museum has already been at the centre of controversy after reports earlier this year that it had removed references to “Palestine†from some of its displays. The Palestinian ambassador to the UK, Husam Zomlot, recently called on the Foreign Office to intervene in what he described as the museum’s “erasure†of history, and refused an invitation to meet Cullinan until the references were restored.

The British Museum said in a statement at the time: “We have not removed the term ‘Palestine' from displays and continue to refer to it across a series of galleries, both contemporary and historic, and on our website.â€

The UK's first annual Jewish Culture Month, which kicked off on 16 May, is intended as a “nationwide celebration of Jewish culture, community and creativityâ€. A wide variety of museums are running events, including the Museum of Liverpool, London's Science Museum and Oxford's Story Museum.

The event aims to spotlight Jewish culture at a time when many Jewish practitioners say they have experienced rising antisemitism in the sector since the outbreak of the current Israel-Gaza conflict in October 2023.