British Museum

Art historian Dr Janina Ramirez has lovingly paced the galleries of the British Museum since she was a child. Now, as the museum’s incomparable collections lie shuttered during the lockdown, she has been given permission to curate a highly personal selection of some of her favourites amongst its many treasures and to guide us on her very own virtual tour of its silent, empty galleries.

For Ramirez, no other collection in the world makes it possible to chart the highs and lows of humans across the world, and across time, in quite the same way. Her tour takes her across many different cultures and periods of history, alighting on objects as varied as a decorated Aztec skull, ancient Egyptian cat mummies and an 18th-century tea set. As she says, ‘Whether they provide a glimpse into enduring notions of love, sex and spirituality or catalogue moments of change, power and achievement, the artefacts in this one building show us the eternal and the ephemeral.’

The film is a personal reflection on the solace, wisdom and sense of perspective that the British Museum’s global collections can bring us in a time of crisis. ‘We all matter,’ Ramirez concludes, ‘we all stitch ourselves, even in the smallest way, onto the tapestry of existence. These artefacts show us that each of us leaves our footprints in the sands of time.'