William Buller Fagg

William Buller Fagg (28 April 1914 – 10 July 1992) was the Keeper of the Department of Anthropology at the British Museum (1969–1974) and pioneering historian of Yoruban and Nigerian art, with a particular focus on the art of Benin.

William Fagg was born in Upper Norwood, London to William Percy Fagg (d.1939), an antiquarian bookseller, and his wife Lilian Fagg (née Buller). His brother was the British archaeologist and museum curator Bernard Evelyn Buller Fagg.

Fagg was educated at Dulwich College before entering Magdalene College, Cambridge to study Classics, winning prizes for Latin hexameters and Latin epigrams. After graduating in 1936, the next year he went on to take a second degree in Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge.

Fagg had a long and distinguished career at the British Museum. In 1938, he was appointed the Assistant Keeper of Anthropology and continued in this post until 1955, when he became the Deputy Keeper of Anthropology and, from 1969 to 1973, he was the Keeper of the Department of Ethnography. In 1969, he oversaw the move of the Department of Ethnography from the British Museum to Burlington Gardens where it was known as the Museum of Mankind. Between 1942–1945, Fagg had been seconded to the Industries and Manufactures Department of the Board of Trade.

On his return to the British Museum after the end of the War, he was given curatorial responsibility for the African collections. Fagg spent a considerable amount of time engaged in fieldwork in Africa: Zaire 1949–1950; Nigeria 1953, 1958–1959, 1971, 1981; Cameroon 1966; Mali 1969. His brother, Bernard Fagg, had been working in Nigeria since 1939 and in 1952 he had established the first national museum in Jos, Nigeria, becoming the head of this institution in 1957 until Nigerian Independence. William Fagg purchased Benin art for the newly founded Lagos museum during his 1958–1959 trip to Nigeria. He donated his photographic negatives and related documentation to the Royal Anthropological Institute shortly before his death so they could be used for research purposes by others.

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