The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution

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These new acquisitions include some of the youngest artists to be collected by the British Museum, presented alongside works by celebrated artists from Mary Delany, Andy Warhol and Barbara Hepworth to Édouard Manet. The principal gallery devoted to Asian art in the museum is Gallery 33 with its comprehensive display of Chinese, Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asian objects. An adjacent gallery showcases the Amaravati sculptures and monuments. Other galleries on the upper floors are devoted to its Japanese, Korean, painting and calligraphy, and Chinese ceramics collections. This includes full participation in the Benin Dialogue Group and working towards the aim of facilitating a new permanent display of Benin works of art in Benin City, to include works from the British Museum's collections. The Museum is also a fully committed partner within the Digital Benin initiative, focused on developing an online tool and database to digitally reunite as many as possible of the historical objects, documents, and photographs that illuminate the Benin Kingdom. Saite Sarcophagus of Sasobek, the vizier (prime minister) of the northern part of Egypt in the reign of Psammetichus I (664–610 BC)

Room 6 – Pair of Human Headed Winged Lions and reliefs from Nimrud with the Balawat Gates, c. 860 BCThe collections represent the civilisations of the ancient Near East and its adjacent areas. These cover Mesopotamia, Persia, the Arabian Peninsula, Anatolia, the Caucasus, parts of Central Asia, Syria, the Holy Land and Phoenician settlements in the western Mediterranean from the prehistoric period and include objects from the 7th century. The turmoil has given fresh momentum to calls for some of the museum’s celebrated and looted objects to be returned to their original homes. It was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and you can find parts of it at the British Museum. Statues from the mausoleum can be found in the Ancient Greek wing on the ground floor. 10. Shrine of Amaravati Credit: British Museum

The Armada Service, 26 silver dishes found in Devon, south west England, (late 16th to early 17th centuries) Made up of over 200 objects including loans from 28 lenders, the large scale of the exhibition enables contributions from a wide collection of national and international institutions, as well as supporting material from the collection. It features iconic Roman military objects alongside evidence of the real lives of men, women, and children – citizens and non-citizens, free or enslaved – in forts and frontiers across the empire.

Room 95: Chinese Ceramics – Sir Percival David Collection ( The Sir Joseph Hotung Centre for Ceramic Studies) Experiencing decades of civil war and now ruled again by a military dictatorship, Myanmar – also known as Burma – is an isolated figure on the world stage today, and its story is relatively little known in the West. However, the extraordinary artistic output of its peoples, over more than a millennium of cross-cultural interactions and political change, attests to its pivotal role at a crossroads of Asia. With a collection numbering some 330,000 works, [79] the British Museum possesses the world's largest and most important collection of Mesopotamian antiquities outside Iraq. A collection of immense importance, the holdings of Assyrian sculpture, Babylonian and Sumerian antiquities are among the most comprehensive in the world with entire suites of rooms panelled in alabaster Assyrian palace reliefs from Nimrud, Nineveh and Khorsabad. The Rosetta Vase, earthenware pottery vase designed by the contemporary British artist Grayson Perry, (2011) Harvey Dimond explores the historical resonances of this slavery-referencing artwork made during a suffocating pandemic

Protecting a superpower for over half a millennium, the imperial Roman army acted as a military, naval and police force to around a quarter of the Earth's population. However, life for the majority of those serving was surprisingly domestic, with many living in settled military communities stretching from Scotland to the Red Sea. This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sourcesin this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.The Frau Olga-Julia Wegener Collection of 147 Chinese paintings from the Tang to the Qing dynasties. The Round Reading Room, which was designed by the architect Sydney Smirke, opened in 1857. For almost 150 years researchers came here to consult the museum's vast library. The Reading Room closed in 1997 when the national library (the British Library) moved to a new building at St Pancras. Today it has been transformed into the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Centre. One of five Largitio silver dishes of the emperor Licinius found at Niš, Serbia and a hexagonal gold coin-set pendant of Constantine the Great, (Early 4th century AD) Sara Quattrocchi Febles explores how a film can no longer be fixed in time and place when screened outdoors