My friend Kusuma Barnett, who has died aged 77, played a significant role in promoting the use of volunteers to help enhance the visitor experience at the British Museum in London.
As head of volunteers and volunteer programmes from 2001 to 2010, Kusuma was able to transform every aspect of the volunteer provision at the museum, with the support of the director, Neil MacGregor, and staff right across the institution.
This included Hands On desks, where volunteers were encouraged to engage with visitors by offering them the chance to handle real as well as replica artefacts and to learn about and feel the connection with the past. When Kusuma first began volunteering in the late 1980s, there were only a handful of participants, rising to about 50 or 60 by 1992. At the end of her time as head of volunteers the total was nearer to 500.
She could never have imagined the trajectory her life would take when she arrived in Britain from Sri Lanka (then Ceylon, a British dominion) in 1964. Born in Colombo, she was the only child of Kaluhath Rajapakse, a post office worker, and Walasingha Gunawardena, a housewife. After attending a Roman Catholic secondary school she decided to travel to Britain at the age of 17, spending a year serving tea at the Ceylon Tea Centre in London before enrolling as a student nurse at St Mary’s hospital in Paddington, qualifying in 1968. Nursing was not to be her vocation for long, however; she left in 1971, taking on various office jobs until in 1974 she began working on telesales for Haymarket publishing company.
In 1976 she moved to become an office manager at the Reliance Service employment bureau, later rising to be an area executive in charge of several offices and working there until 1988. After leaving that position she became a part-time self-employed consultant to Reliance, using her spare time to take an art history degree at Birkbeck, University of London, followed by a master’s at the Courtauld Institute of Art in 1998.
By that time she was closely involved with the British Museum volunteers, taking over as head in 2001, a full-time job for which she refused any payment. She was made MBE for her work in 2006, stepping down as head in 2010, but continued to volunteer until early in 2022.
The internationalism of the British Museum’s collections and audiences mattered hugely to Kusuma, placing her at the heart of a worldwide community, epitomised by the museum’s international training programme, where her sessions were greatly valued. Her advice was sought by many other museums and historic sites that were keen to either introduce or expand their volunteer training.
Before her death Kusuma asked a friend to make sure she came across as “kind, fun and fabulous” in her funeral address. What was spoken in jest was indeed the truth; she was a vivid personality who lit up many people’s lives.
Kusuma is survived by her husband, Michael Barnett, a consultant anaesthetist, whom she met when she was a nurse and married in 1972.
