Almost a millennium after its creation, the Bayeux Tapestry has once again become the center of heated debate—this time not over the story it tells, but over its very future. As of August 21, 2025, nearly 50,000 people have signed a petition to halt the planned loan of the tapestry to London’s British Museum, a move scheduled for September 2026 through July 2027. The campaign, launched in July by French art historian Didier Rykner, has drawn in not only concerned citizens, but also prominent cultural figures and international voices, all united by fears for the tapestry’s safety.
The tapestry, which famously depicts William the Conqueror’s victory at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, is an irreplaceable artifact of both French and English history. Its home, the Bayeux Tapestry Museum in Normandy, is set to undergo extensive renovations, providing the window for this proposed cultural exchange. The loan was jointly announced in July 2025 by French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, with the intention of celebrating the longstanding ties between the two nations—especially poignant in the post-Brexit era.
But the announcement has been anything but universally celebrated. Textile restorers have sounded the alarm, warning that transporting the 1,000-year-old embroidered linen could cause irreversible damage. According to The Art Newspaper, Rykner’s petition cites these warnings, emphasizing the tapestry’s extreme fragility. Former Bayeux Tapestry Museum director Isabelle Attard, who led the institution from 2005 to 2010, underscored the risks in stark terms: “I think the tapestry must not be transported, for several reasons: its value is incalculable and if anything happens to it no amount of money and no other similar object can replace it. It’s [also] extremely fragile because of its age, past movements over the centuries, the way it has been subjected to almost non-stop lighting since its return to Bayeux after World War 2, and the way it’s currently presented, sewn to a textile support hung from a rail on little roller bearings, creating tensions everywhere.”
Attard’s concerns are echoed by other experts, including Michael Daley, director of conservation watchdog ArtWatch UK. Speaking to The Telegraph, Daley warned, “What’s particularly concerning about moving works of art about is that they are so intrinsically vulnerable and susceptible to injuries caused by any number of possible or likely mishaps—knocks, vibrations, being dropped, fluctuations of temperature and humidity and so forth—and even of being lost altogether when sent by water or air.”
Despite the groundswell of opposition, Rykner remains realistic about the prospects of success. He told The Art Newspaper, “The current number of signatories on the petition isn’t enough, but we have a year in hand, we still have time.” He’s no stranger to such campaigns; in the past, he spearheaded a petition to block Macron’s plan to install contemporary stained-glass windows in six chapels of Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral, replacing 19th-century designs by Eugène Viollet le Duc. That effort, which amassed 294,000 signatures, ultimately failed, but Rykner’s persistence has made him a notable figure in French cultural debates.
This latest petition, which denounces the loan as a “crime against French heritage,” has found resonance among nationalist circles in France. Yet the controversy isn’t just a French affair. Across the Channel, British voices have also expressed concern. Rykner has openly stated his hope to unite French and British opponents of the exchange, which would also see Anglo-Saxon and Medieval treasures from the British Museum travel to France in return. For Rykner, editor of the online arts journal La Tribune de L’Art and a vocal critic of Macron, the stakes are nothing less than the preservation of a unique cultural legacy.
President Macron himself acknowledged the controversy during a press conference with Starmer on July 8, 2025, admitting that opinions were divided. The tapestry’s journey to London has been proposed before, most notably in 2018, when Macron floated the idea as a gesture of goodwill. That loan was conditional on satisfactory safety assessments and was met with skepticism by curators and conservationists alike—including then-director of the Bayeux Museum Antoine Verney and textile restorers Isabelle Bédat and Béatrice Girault-Kurtzemann, who had worked on stabilizing the tapestry’s backing in the 1980s.
The tapestry’s vulnerability is not a new revelation. In 2021, a report found it too fragile to travel, putting the initial plans on ice. Hopes were briefly revived in 2022, when the Victoria & Albert Museum in London undertook scholarship to explore the feasibility of exhibiting the tapestry, but no further developments emerged. Now, with the British Museum preparing for its own blockbuster exhibition, the question of risk versus reward has returned with renewed urgency.
Several specialists have reportedly told Rykner that moving the tapestry poses a greater threat than leaving it in place during the museum’s renovation. “I’ve talked with three or four restorers who have worked on the tapestry and they’re unanimous. It’s not possible to move it far, and certainly not to London, it’s too fragile,” Rykner told The Art Newspaper. However, he claims that many experts are reluctant to speak publicly, as they are civil servants and feel constrained by their positions.
For its part, the Bayeux Tapestry Museum has distanced itself from the decision-making process. A spokesperson explained, “The French state owns the tapestry and the museum is only its custodian. We therefore can’t answer questions on its conservation and restoration, nor on the organisation of the loan, which is the responsibility of the state.”
On the other side of the debate, British Museum director Nicholas Cullinan has championed the loan as a model of international cultural partnership. “This is exactly the kind of international partnership that I want us to champion and take part in: sharing the best of our collection as widely as possible—and in return displaying global treasures of the world never seen in London before to a global audience,” Cullinan said in a statement reported by ARTnews.
As the clock ticks down to the scheduled loan, the fate of the Bayeux Tapestry hangs in the balance. The coming year will see intensifying debate, as campaigners on both sides make their voices heard. For now, the tapestry remains in Bayeux, its threads carrying the weight of a thousand years—and the hopes and anxieties of two nations.
