Putting Cyprus on the map

In 1932 a survey of museums in the British Empire, funded by the Carnegie Corporation in the USA, blamed the poor condition of the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia on inadequate funding from the colonial government. Support for antiquities was not a priority in the British colony’s impoverished economy. However, grants made by the Carnegie and administered through the Museums Association of Britain funded a renovation of the museum and a tour by its Curator, P. Dikaios, of museums in Europe. His keynote speech at the Association’s annual conference in Brussels in 1935 made the Museum known to the European museum world and elicited a further grant from the Carnegie. Rather than welcoming this success, the Governor of Cyprus reduced to nil his own administration’s funding for the Museum and blocked its curator’s participation in an international congress. The episode illustrates how personal initiatives, launched by a Cypriot rather than by a British official, could overcome the indifference and parsimony of the colonial government

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