How should we talk about Civilisation?

In 1969, Kenneth Clark, in his iconic television series, asked the British people: 'What is civilisation?' Nearly fifty years on, the BBC is turning to Clark's question and responding with a range of 'personal views' from some of our leading historians and curators today. The BBC has called the series and the accompanying season Civilisations because they want to celebrate a wide range of responses. The Civilisations Festival runs from 2 – 11 March, which coincides with the opening of our Flux exhibition, featuring 100 sculptural busts in Parian – a kind of porcelain. The subjects include well known 19th-century figures but curator Matt Smith asks why do museums celebrate the lives of some people and ignore others? Who writes history? Whose histories define Britishness, and how does this change over time?