But the public-relations operation, complete with jolly handshakes with the Egyptian Ambassador, belies the turmoil going on behind closed doors at the museum.
Staff and management will meet with the Advisory, Arbitration and Conciliation Service tomorrow in an attempt to avert industial action. Positions on both sides are entrenched and the threat of a strike is growing daily.
Curators in every department of the museum face compulsory redundancy in the next two months. Elderly researchers and support staff will suffer most. A number of senior employees who expected to work until they were 65 have now been dismissed at 60 and the term of notice offered is at least three months shorter than the civil service standard they believe to be their right.
The row threatens to dull enthusiasm surrounding the major building development on the site, just as strike action at the new British Library marred its move to King's Cross.
Museum curators were incensed last week by news of a private deal offered to a handful of experienced staff. Four have been sacked, yet told that if they agree never to talk about the arrangement they can continue to use the museum's research facilities, much as if they were still employees. The deal, apparently appealing to their academic and professional pride, is part of a museum-wide scramble to find the money to staff the prestigious £100 million 'great court' development, designed by Norman Foster and due to open this year.
'Some of the older staff will be badly financially inconvenienced by these redundancy deals. They have made all sorts of calculations on the understanding that they would be working until they were 65,' said Alan Leighton of the First Division Association, the union which represents the curatorial staff.
The redundancy notices went out just before Christmas. Since then the three unions with membership inside the museum have been trying to improve the terms.
'There haven't been redundancies on this scale before, so the museum has never breached procedures before,' said Janice Collins, the union officer for the administrative staff. 'We haven't heard the management argument yet, but members over 60 should have been entitled to a period of notice as long as a year. I only hope the museum sees sense tomorrow.'
The dispute centres on the museum's failure to follow established civil service practice, but it is part of a general picture of disintegrating morale inside the Bloomsbury institution.
Last spring one of the younger managers, Suzanna Taverne, was appointed to work alongside the academic director, Robert Anderson. Many curators believe the partnership is proving a disaster.
'The museum is a double-headed monster now,' said one. 'The trustees have only kept on Anderson to show they are not being bullied by the Government, but there is no clear chain of command. Every department had to find a 10 per cent budget cut and they have generally chosen the weakest employees.'
Taverne argues this is not true. She and her department heads have had to target support staff who worked in roles which did not directly benefit the public,' she said. 'I understand why people are upset because the great court is something of an invisible project at the moment, apart from the inconvenience the work is causing. When it is open it will be a great benefit to all of us.'
Taverne insists that redeployment of redundant staff is going well, but she admits that the issue of standard civil service practice for redundacies is 'an extremely murky question'. She believes civil service procedure is 'inappropriate' for the kind of modern organisation the museum should become.
One curator said: 'We have not been told what we should stop doing in order to reorganise. Everyone is just being asked to work harder so the museum is not publicly embarrassed. Why didn't the trustees plan ahead?'
In fact, there is very little resentment of Taverne herself. Staff tend to feel she has inherited a financial mess and they blame the museum's board of trustees for setting up a series of big building projects without fundraising for endowments. The trustees, in turn, blame a lack of government funding. Graham C. Greene, chairman of the trustees, said: 'We have more going on here at the moment than at any time since the 1820s and, yes, changes have to be made to fund that.'
One union member said: 'Nobody wants to strike. We all want the museum to succeed, but it cannot be allowed to treat long-serving staff in this way just because of mismanagement in the past.'
