Sunday, July 6, 2008

Oxford: The Ashmolean





The Ashmolean; a massive magpie like collection of all sorts of objets d'art. An interesting visit, but there's a huge renovation project on until 2011, so just a fraction of the collection was displayed. Here's what the website had to say...

With the opening of its doors on 24th May 1683, the Ashmolean Museum provided a setting in which the private collection emerged into the public domain. Even the use of the term 'Museum' was a novelty in English: a few years later the 'New World of Words' (1706) defined it as 'a Study, or Library; also a College, or Publick Place for the Resort of Learned Men', with a specific entry for 'Ashmole's Museum', described as 'a neat Building in the City of Oxford'.

The collection presented to the University of Oxford by Elias Ashmole (1617–92) was in origin already half a century old by this time, having been founded by John Tradescant (d.1638) and displayed to the public (for a fee), first by him and later by his son John (1608–62) in their dwelling house at Lambeth, widely known as 'The Ark'. The contents were universal in scope, with man-made and natural specimens from every corner of the known world.

http://www.ashmolean.org/

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