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It is a standing source of astonishment and amusement to visitors that the British Museum has so few British things in it: that it is a museum about the world as seen from Britain rather than a history focused on these islands.

London has fine museums, the British Library is one of the greatest library institutions in the world... It's got everything you want, really.

Museums are like the quiet car of the world. It's a place you can come to escape, where there's authenticity, there's uniqueness, there's calm, there's physicality.

The museum spreads its surfaces everywhere, and becomes an untitled collection of generalizations that mobilize the eye.

One of the brilliant things about Britain is the way you've managed to save old things but to keep using them - that they've not just become museums the way they do in the United States.

Museums provide places of relaxation and inspiration. And most importantly, they are a place of authenticity. We live in a world of reproductions - the objects in museums are real. It's a way to get away from the overload of digital technology.

Some of our greatest historical and artistic treasures we place in museums; others, we take for walks.

Museums are good things, places to look and absorb and learn.

Museums are managers of consciousness. They give us an interpretation of history, of how to view the world and locate ourselves in it. They are, if you want to put it in positive terms, great educational institutions. If you want to put it in negative terms, they are propaganda machines.

I am part of a team organising an Emma Hamilton exhibition for the National Maritime Museum for 2016, and the amount of planning is a revelation - borrowing from museums and collections all over the world.