Ashmolean Museum

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. The most important of the museums belonging to the University of Oxford. It is named after the antiquary Elias Ashmole (1617–92), who in 1675 offered his collection to the university as a gesture of ‘filial respect’. The collection had been largely formed by John Tradescant the Elder (c.1570–1638) and his son John the Younger (1608–62), gardeners and travellers. They assembled a remarkable ‘closet of rarities’ (a collection of curiosities rather than works of art), which John the Younger gave to his friend Ashmole in 1659. Ashmole stipulated that a building should be erected to house the collection, and this was constructed in 1679–83, probably to the design of Thomas Wood, a local mason and sculptor. When it opened in 1683 it was the first public museum in Britain. Various other collections were accumulated by the university (some presented by former students like Ashmole) and a much larger museum was eventually created to house them. An impressive Neoclassical building, designed by C. R. Cockerell, it opened in 1845, and at this time was known as the University Galleries. An extension was opened in 1894. The institution was renamed the Ashmolean Museum in 1899 and in 1908 was formally titled the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology; the original building is now known as the ‘Old Ashmolean Building’ and houses the Museum of the History of Science. Little of the Tradescant–Ashmole collection remains in the Ashmolean, having been distributed to other institutions (the famous stuffed dodo that was an inspiration to Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland, is now in the University Museum, opened in 1860, which is devoted to natural history). The Ashmolean has four departments—Western Art, Eastern Art, Antiquities, and Coins—and has great riches in all of them. Among the antiquities are marbles from the collection formed by Thomas Arundel in the 17th century, and the Old Master drawings include a superlative representation of Michelangelo and Raphael from the collection of Sir Thomas Lawrence.