He was previously Director of the National Gallery, London, between 1987 and 2002. He read French and German at New College, Oxford, and studied philosophy at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. He took an LLB in Law at the University of Edinburgh and was called to the Scottish Bar. He studied 17th- and 19th-century art at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and from 1975 to 1981 he was a lecturer in History of Art and Architecture at the University of Reading and a part-time lecturer at the Courtauld Institute of Art. In 1981 he became Editor of The Burlington Magazine.

Neil MacGregor is a Fellow of New College, Oxford, an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy and an Honorary Member of the Royal Scottish Academy. He is a Member of the Board of Resource, a Trustee of the Raad van Toezicht of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Chairman of the UNESCO Advisory Group of the Hermitage, St Petersburg, and of the Visiting Committee of the J Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, and a member of the Board of Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich. From 1987 until 1997 he was Chairman of the UK National Museums Directors' Conference and of the European Commission Steering Committee for Multimedia access to European cultural patrimony.