University Museum of Art and Archaeology in Oxford, England
The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology ()[2] on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is Britain's first public museum.[3] Its first building was erected in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave to the University of Oxford in 1677. It is also the world's second university museum, after the establishment of the Kunstmuseum Basel in 1661 by the University of Basel.[4]
The present building was built between 1841 and 1845. The museum reopened in 2009 after a major redevelopment, and in November 2011, new galleries focusing on Egypt and Nubia were unveiled. In May 2016, the museum also opened redisplayed galleries of 19th-century art.
History
Broad Street
The museum opened on 24 May 1683,[5] with naturalist Robert Plot as the first keeper. The building on Broad Street (later known as the Old Ashmolean) is sometimes attributed to Sir Christopher Wren or Thomas Wood.[6] Elias Ashmole had acquired the collection from the gardeners, travellers, and collectors John Tradescant the Elder and his son, John Tradescant the Younger. It included antique coins, books, engravings, geological specimens, and zoological specimens—one of which was the stuffed body of the last dodo ever seen in Europe; but by 1755 the stuffed dodo was so moth-eaten that it was destroyed, except for its head and one claw.[7]
Beaumont Street
Wood-engraving of the Ashmolean
c. 1845
The present building dates from 1841 to 1845. It was designed as the University Galleries by Charles Cockerell[8] in a classical style and stands on Beaumont Street. One wing of the building is occupied by the Taylor Institution, the modern languages faculty of the university, standing on the corner of Beaumont Street and St Giles' Street. This wing of the building was also designed by Charles Cockerell, using the Ionic order of Greek architecture.[9]
Sir Arthur Evans, who was appointed keeper in 1884 and retired in 1908, is largely responsible for the current museum.[10] Evans found that the Keeper and the Vice-Chancellor (Prof Benjamin Jowett) had managed to lose half of the Ashmole collection and had converted the original building into the Examination Rooms. Charles Drury Edward Fortnum had offered to donate his personal collection of antiques on condition that the museum was put on a sound footing.[11] A donation of £10,000 from Fortnum (£1.21 million as of 2023) enabled Evans to build an extension to the University Galleries and move the Ashmolean collection there in 1894. In 1908, the Ashmolean and the University Galleries were combined as the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology.[12] The museum became a depository for some of the important archaeological finds from Evans' excavations in Crete.[citation needed]
After the various specimens had been moved into new museums, the "Old Ashmolean" building was used as office space for the Oxford English Dictionary. Since 1924, the building has been established as the Museum of the History of Science, with exhibitions including the scientific instruments given to Oxford University by Lewis Evans, amongst them the world's largest collection of astrolabes.[13]
Charles Buller Heberden left £1,000 (£47,000 as of 2023) to the university in 1921, which was used for the Coin Room at the museum.[14]
In 2012, the Ashmolean was awarded a grant of $1.1m by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to establish the University Engagement Programme or UEP. The programme employs three teaching curators and a programme director to develop the use of the museum's collections in the teaching and research of the university.[15]
Renovations
The museum's renovated central atrium in 2009
The interior of the Ashmolean has been extensively modernised in recent years and now includes a restaurant and large gift shop.[16]
In 2000, the Chinese Picture Gallery, designed by van Heyningen and Haward Architects, opened at the entrance of the Ashmolean and is partly integrated into the structure. It was inserted into a lightwell in the Grade 1 listed building, and was designed to support future construction from its roof. Apart from the original Cockerell spaces, this gallery was the only part of the museum retained in the rebuilding. The gallery houses the Ashmolean's own collection and is also used from time to time for the display of loan exhibitions and works by contemporary Chinese artists. It is the only museum gallery in Britain devoted to Chinese paintings.[17]
The Sackler Library, incorporating the older library collections of the Ashmolean, opened in 2001 and has allowed an expansion of the book collection, which concentrates on classical civilization, archaeology and art history.[18]
Between 2006 and 2009, the museum was expanded to the designs of architect Rick Mather and the exhibition design company Metaphor, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The $98.2 million[19] rebuilding resulted in five floors instead of three, with a doubling of the display space, as well as new conservation studios and an education centre.[20] The renovated museum re-opened on 7 November 2009.[21][22]
On 26 November 2011, the Ashmolean opened to the public the new galleries of Ancient Egypt and Nubia. This second phase of major redevelopment now allows the museum to exhibit objects that have been in storage for decades, more than doubling the number of coffins and mummies on display. The project received lead support from Lord Sainsbury's Linbury Trust, along with the Selz Foundation, Mr Christian Levett, as well as other trusts, foundations, and individuals. Rick Mather Architects led the redesign and display of the four previous Egypt galleries and the extension to the restored Ruskin Gallery, previously occupied by the museum shop.[23]
In May 2016, the museum opened new galleries dedicated to the display of its collection of Victorian art.[24] This development allowed for the return to the Ashmolean of the Great Bookcase, designed by William Burges, and described as "the most important example of Victorian painted furniture ever made.".[24]
Collections
Detail from a fragment of wall painting depicting
Akhenaten and
Nefertiti with their daughters
Taichi Arch on the museum's forecourt, a sculpture by the artist
Ju Ming
The main museum contains huge collections of archaeological specimens and fine art. It has one of the best collections of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, majolica pottery, and English silver. The archaeology department includes the bequest of Arthur Evans and so has an excellent collection of Greek and Minoan pottery. The department also has an extensive collection of antiquities from Ancient Egypt and the Sudan, and the museum hosts the Griffith Institute for the advancement of Egyptology.
Highlights of the Ashmolean's collection include:
- Drawings by Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci
- Paintings by Pablo Picasso, Giambattista Pittoni, Paolo Uccello, Anthony van Dyck, Peter Paul Rubens, Paul Cézanne, John Constable, Titian, Claude Lorrain, Samuel Palmer, John Singer Sargent, Piero di Cosimo, William Holman Hunt, and Edward Burne-Jones
- The Alfred Jewel
- Watercolours and paintings by J. M. W. Turner
- The Messiah Stradivarius, a violin made by Antonio Stradivari[25]
- The Daisy Linda Ward bequest in 1939 of 96 still life paintings, including works by Clara Peeters, Adriaen Coorte, and Rachel Ruysch
- The Pissarro Family Archive, donated in the 1950s to the Ashmolean, consisting of paintings, prints, drawings, books, and letters by Camille Pissarro, Lucien Pissarro, Orovida Camille Pissarro, and other members of the Pissarro family[26]
- Arab ceremonial dress owned by Lawrence of Arabia
- A death mask of Oliver Cromwell
- The Crondall hoard, a rare set of Anglo-Saxon gold coins discovered in 1828
- A substantial number of Oxyrhynchus Papyri, including Old and New Testament biblical manuscripts
- Over 30 pieces of Late Roman gold glass roundels from the Catacombs of Rome, the 3rd largest collection after the Vatican and British Museum.[27]
- A collection of Posie rings.
- An extensive collection of antiquities from Prehistoric Egypt and the succeeding Early Dynastic Period of Egypt
- The Parian Marble, the earliest extant example of a Greek chronological table
- The Metrological Relief, showing Ancient Greek measurements
- The ceremonial cloak of Chief Powhatan
- The lantern that Gunpowder Plot conspirator Guy Fawkes carried in 1605
- The Minoan collection of Arthur Evans, the biggest outside Crete
- The Narmer Macehead and Scorpion Macehead
- The Kish tablet
- The Sumerian Kings List[28]
- The Abingdon Sword, an Anglo-Saxon sword found at Abingdon south of Oxford
- The Dalboki hoard of Thracian artefacts, central Bulgaria
- The Scythian antiquities from Nymphaeum, Crimea
Recent major bequests and acquisitions include:
- In 2017 the museum acquired a group portrait by William Dobson painted in Oxford around 1645, during the English Civil War. The group in the painting are Prince Rupert, Colonel William Legge (Governor of Oxford) and Colonel John Russell (commander of the prince's elite Blue Coats). The painting was acquired for the nation through the Acceptance in Lieu scheme, administered by Arts Council England.[29][30]
- In 2017 the museum acquired a Viking hoard that was discovered near Watlington in South Oxfordshire in 2015. It is the first large Viking hoard discovered in Oxfordshire, which once lay on the border of Wessex and Mercia. The hoard contains over 200 Anglo-Saxon coins, including many examples of previously rare coins of Alfred the Great, King of Wessex (871–899) and his less well-known contemporary, King Ceolwulf II of Mercia (874–879).[31][32]
- In 2015 the Ashmolean raised the money needed to acquire a major painting by J. M. W. Turner. With lead support from the Heritage Lottery Fund, a grant from the Art Fund, and a public appeal, the fundraising target was met to secure Turner's only full-size townscape in oils: The High Street, Oxford (1810). The painting was accepted by the nation through the Acceptance in Lieu scheme.[33]
- In October 2014 the Ashmolean acquired a painting by John Constable titled Willy Lott's House from the Stour (The Valley Farm). The painting was accepted by the nation through the Acceptance in Lieu scheme. The farm building depicted in the painting is also seen from a different angle in The Hay Wain, painted 1821 and now at the National Gallery.[34][35][36]
- In October 2014 the Ashmolean acquired a collection of historic English embroideries which was given to the museum by collectors Micheál and Elizabeth Feller. The gift comprises 61 pieces which span the whole of the seventeenth century.[37][38]
- In late 2013, art historian and collector Michael Sullivan bequeathed his collection of more than 400 works of art to the museum. The collection, which includes paintings by Chinese masters Qi Baishi, Zhang Daqian, and Wu Guanzhong, was considered one of the world's most significant collections of modern Chinese art. The museum has a gallery dedicated to Sullivan and his wife Khoan.[39]
- In 2013 the museum was given the sculpture Taichi Arch by Taiwanese artist Ju Ming, which was installed on the museum's main forecourt. It was given to the museum by the Juming Culture and Education Foundation in memory of art historian and collector Michael Sullivan.[40]
- In 2012 the museum was left a 500-piece collection of gold and silver objets d'art, including many pieces of Renaissance silverware, assembled by the antique dealer Michael Welby.[41][42]
- In 2012 the museum acquired Édouard Manet's Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus, painted in 1868, after a public campaign to raise £7.83million while a temporary export bar was placed on it by the RCEWA The campaign received £5.9m from the Heritage Lottery Fund, and a grant of £850,000 from The Art Fund.[43]
Broadway Museum and Art Gallery
In 2013 a museum was opened in the 17th-century "Tudor House" at Broadway, Worcestershire, in the Cotswolds, in partnership with the Ashmolean Museum. In 2017 the museum became known as the Broadway Museum and Art Gallery. The collection includes paintings and furniture from the founding collections of the Ashmolean Museum, given by Elias Ashmole to the University of Oxford in 1683, and local exhibits expand upon elements of the timeline of the village.[44]
Theft
On 31 December 1999, during the fireworks that accompanied the celebration of the millennium, thieves used scaffolding on an adjoining building to climb onto the roof of the museum and stole Cézanne’s landscape painting View of Auvers-sur-Oise. Valued at £3 million, the painting has been described as an important work illustrating the transition from early to mature Cézanne painting.[87] As the thieves ignored other works in the same room, and the stolen Cézanne has not been offered for sale, it is speculated that this was a case of an artwork stolen to order.[88][89] The Cezanne has not been recovered and is one of the FBI's Top Ten Art Crimes.[90]
