Creating a world class gallery

THE BIG IDEA
60 seconds to change the world

Can a simple idea help make the world a better place? Each week we ask a guest to outline an idea to improve all our lives. Here, curator and cultural historian Augustus Casely-Hayford, argues we should all own a part of cultural history.

Let's create a list of world heritage objects.

These are things that are so important to telling our story that henceforth they can't be bought, sold or truly owned by any single person, individual, or nation.

I hope that these objects would be on display in major institutions but very occasionally I would like to see them tour.

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Part of being on this list would be that they have to get out beyond the nation that had custodianship of them to other places.

Also, possibly once every four years there would be a bid by a nation to host particular bits of this - like a sort of cultural Olympics.

They would bring bits of this collection together and we would all have the pleasure of seeing them.

Also, I would hope that one part of this would be that, that nation would be left a really world class gallery.

Augustus Casely-Hayford is a curator and cultural historian.

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Below is a selection of your comments:

I was under the impression that museums and galleries already shared collections to allow greater visibility and access - recent display of the terracotta warriors for example.
Andrew, Bedford

What a fantastic idea - an Olympics I'd actually want to fund and attend!
Christine, Swindon

I'd suggest that we save Bletchley Park from crumbling to dust. It sowed the original seed of the 'information age'. Without the development of Colossus and the Bombe we wouldn't have general purpose computing. Yet for some reason all attempts to save Bletchley Park as a heritage site seem to have, currently, come to nothing.
Dougie Lawson, Basingstoke, UK

Embrace ignorance… it is how we grow as individuals, communities, and nations.
Rhonda, North Riverside, IL, USA

Let's not do this artefact Olympics. Let's deal with global warming, world health care and the oil aero and armaments influence on the global economy first.

I suggest putting any funding made available to this circus to building solar panel factories. A national industry based on success instead of the usual nationalisation of failed business.
Trickyflyingdave, GP