The Museum houses a vast collection of world art and artefacts and is free to all visitors.. The board was formed on the museum's inception to hold its collections in trust for the nation without actually owning them themselves, and now fulfil a mainly advisory role. We'd also like to encourage visitors, where possible, to walk, cycle or drive in to visit. London: The British Museum Press, pg 92, Wilson, David, M. (2002). The origin of the name is not known; the word 'British' had some resonance nationally at this period, so soon after the Jacobite rebellion of 1745; it must be assumed that the museum was christened in this light. Its ownership of some of its most famous objects originating in other countries is disputed and remains the subject of international controversy through repatriation claims, most notably in the case of the Elgin Marbles[7] of Greece, and the Rosetta Stone[8] of Egypt. The British Museum has one of the world's largest and most comprehensive collections of antiquities from the Classical world, with over 100,000 objects. The museum was founded in the middle of the 18th century by Hans Sloane, a scientist and collector. [105], The British Museum has stated that the "restitutionist premise, that whatever was made in a country must return to an original geographical site, would empty both the British Museum and the other great museums of the world". DMS (degrees, minutes and seconds) format. Museum - Museum - The Louvre: It was a matter of public concern in France that the royal collections were inaccessible to the populace, and eventually a selection of paintings was exhibited at the Luxembourg Palace in 1750 by Louis XV. The Kingdom of Benin. Although today principally a museum of cultural art objects and antiquities, the British Museum was founded as a "universal museum". Email. Contactless payment is preferred in our shops and cafés. London: The British Museum Press, p. 5, Permanent establishment of the Research Laboratory (now the oldest such establishment in continuous existence), Cook, B.F. (2005). The British Museum is one of the principal landmarks and tourist attractions of London, situated in Bloomsbury. British Museum Contact Number: +44-2073238299. [46] In 2013 the museum's website received 19.5 millions visits, an increase of 47% from the previous year. Galleries in the Museum may be closed for maintenance, refurbishment or private events. During the course of his lifetime, and particularly after he married the widow of a wealthy Jamaican planter,[9] Sloane gathered a large collection of curiosities and, not wishing to see his collection broken up after death, he bequeathed it to King George II, for the nation, for a sum of £20,000. [51] Prior to the 1963 Act, it was chaired by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor and the Speaker of the House of Commons. The discovery of the site of British Fort Sandusky was entirely by accident. General - The British Columbia Aviation Museum is a major attraction on Vancouver Island. Letter to Charles Long (1823), BMCE115/3,10. We regret that we are unable to open (Room 33) Sir Joseph Hotung Gallery of China and South Asia at present. Artefacts from the Islamic world are on display in Gallery 34 of the museum. With a collection numbering some 330,000 works,[72] the British Museum possesses the world's largest and most important collection of Mesopotamian antiquities outside Iraq. In 1895, Parliament gave the museum trustees a loan of £200,000 to purchase from the Duke of Bedford all 69 houses which backed onto the museum building in the five surrounding streets – Great Russell Street, Montague Street, Montague Place, Bedford Square and Bloomsbury Street. If you've lost an item while visiting the Museum, please email lostproperty@britishmuseum.org. [b] The British Museum Act 1753 also added two other libraries to the Sloane collection, namely the Cottonian Library, assembled by Sir Robert Cotton, dating back to Elizabethan times, and the Harleian Library, the collection of the Earls of Oxford. [77] A 2011 donation of £1 million enabled the museum to acquire a complete set of Pablo Picasso's Vollard Suite. Please speak to staff on your arrival to enquire about availability. [104] In 2020 the museum appointed a curator to research the history of its collections, including disputed items. It became easier to lend objects, the constitution of the board of trustees changed and the Natural History Museum became fully independent. Make sure to subscribe to our emails and follow us on social media so you can keep exploring history, humanity and the British Museum itself and be the first to hear about our latest news. In January 1938 workmen were digging foundations for a new house in Wunmonije Compound in the city of Ife, in what is now south-western Nigeria. For more information on how we use cookies and how to manage cookies, please follow the 'Read more' link, otherwise select 'Accept and close'. [50], A board of 25 trustees (with the director as their accounting officer for the purposes of reporting to Government) is responsible for the general management and control of the museum, in accordance with the British Museum Act 1963 and the Museums and Galleries Act 1992. The collections represent the civilisations of the ancient Near East and its adjacent areas. Gavin R de Beer, Sir Hans Sloane and the British Museum (London, 1953). Under his supervision, the British Museum Library (now part of the British Library) quintupled in size and became a well-organised institution worthy of being called a national library, the largest library in the world after the National Library of Paris. Its permanent collection, numbering some 8 million works,is among the largest and . A fascinating glimpse into ancient Assyrian culture, history, and art explored through one of its most famous rulers, King Ashurbanipal. With the departure and the completion of the new White Wing (fronting Montague Street) in 1884, more space was available for antiquities and ethnography and the library could further expand. The four tube stations closest to the Museum are: We have a wide range of services for disabled visitors. 65–66, Building the British Museum, Marjorie Caygill & Christopher Date 1999, Norman Foster and the British Museum, Norman Foster, Deyan Sudjic & Spencer de Grey 2001, Reported in the list of Sloane's collection given to his executors in 1753. It is situated in a beautiful old building at Great Russel street. British Museum Address: Great Russell St, London WC1B 3DG, United Kingdom. Museum, institution dedicated to preserving and interpreting the primary tangible evidence of humankind and the environment. Black cabs can be pre-booked, hailed on the street or found at designated taxi ranks around Central London. I thoroughly recommend the exhibitions. Reproduced in MacGregor (1994a:29), Tony Kitto, "The celebrated connoisseur: Charles Townley, 1737–1805", Searches on 8 January 2012, return totals of 700,000, but many are in other departments. This is a look around one of the most impressive collections of human history in the world. [98], It is a point of controversy whether museums should be allowed to possess artefacts taken from other countries,[7][99] and the British Museum is a notable target for criticism. Ashmole, the Keeper of the Greek and Roman Antiquities appreciated the original top-lighting of these galleries and removed the Victorian colour scheme, commenting: Ashmole had never liked the Duveen Gallery: The Cairo Museum has 200,000 artefacts, with leading collections reposited at the Egyptian Museum of Berlin (100,000), Musée du Louvre (60,000), Petrie Museum (80,000), The Metropolitan Museum of art (26,000), University of Pennsylvania (42,000), Ashmolean Museum (40,000), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (40,000), Museo Egizio, Turin (32,500 objects). There is a charge for them but they are exceptionally well curated. Egypt Read more. The newly discovered set was first shown at the Scottish Antiquaries Society, who were unable to raise funds to buy them. The "cupboard" books in the British Museum Library. There is a taxi rank on Great Russell Street at the Museum's main gates. NOTE: The British Museum is located in the Bloomsbury area of London at Great Russell St, Bloomsbury, London WC1B 3DG. Metal working was not indigenous to Oceania before Europeans arrived, so many of the artefacts from the collection are made from stone, shell, bone and bamboo. The museum is equidistant from the Russell Square, Tottenham Court Road, Goodge Street and Holborn Tube stations, which serve numerous London Underground lines. The reliefs decorated Room XXXVI, within the central area of the palace. The American Museum in Britain, however, is a serious and significant museum. From Tell al-Ubaid came the bronze furnishings of a Sumerian temple, including life-sized lions and a panel featuring the lion-headed eagle Indugud found by H. R. Hall in 1919–24. Protesters also smuggled a four-metre Trojan horse on to the museum's forecourt. Protestors also drew attention to the fact that BP lobbied the UK government to help it gain access to Iraq's oil reserves prior to Britain's invasion in 2003. [31], Until the mid-19th century, the museum's collections were relatively circumscribed but, in 1851, with the appointment to the staff of Augustus Wollaston Franks to curate the collections, the museum began for the first time to collect British and European medieval antiquities, prehistory, branching out into Asia and diversifying its holdings of ethnography. The science department[94] has and continues to develop techniques to date artefacts, analyse and identify the materials used in their manufacture, to identify the place an artefact originated and the techniques used in their creation. Although completed in 1938, it was hit by a bomb in 1940 and remained semi-derelict for 22 years, before reopening in 1962. Perth hospitality specialists Heyder & Shears will coordinate your function from start to finish — covering service, logistics, styling and catering. [4] The Museum was established in 1753, largely based on the collections of the Anglo-Irish physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane. The department has also benefited greatly from the legacy of pioneering anthropologists such as AC Haddon, Bronisław Malinowski and Katherine Routledge. 6–7 (Julian Reade, 2004. 3. The Department of Coins and Medals was created in 1861 and celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2011.[93]. The latter benefited from the purchase in 1905 of the Sarawak collection put together by Dr Charles Hose, as well as from other colonial officers such as Edward A Jeffreys. The companion volume to Nineveh and Its Remains. Tickets are also available to book for our upcoming exhibition Hokusai: The Great Picture Book of Everything which runs from 30 September 2021 – 30 January 2022. From the Warren Cup to Durers Rhinoceros, the Lewis Chessmen to the Aztec turquoise serpent and the Gayer-Anderson Cat, the iconic objects of the British Museum are here presented in an exciting and accessible new way, highlighting the ... A large column base from the One Hundred Column Hall at Persepolis was acquired in exchange from the Oriental Institute, Chicago. British Museum, London, United Kingdom — Google Arts & Culture. See the "Facilities and Services" tab on the home page for each department for details on each library; not all are kept at Bloomsbury. A particular highlight are the three Sámi drums from northern Sweden of which only about 70 are extant. The construction commenced around the courtyard with the East Wing (The King's Library) in 1823–1828, followed by the North Wing in 1833–1838, which originally housed among other galleries a reading room, now the Wellcome Gallery. We hope to be able to reopen the gallery in due course. The British museum is the first more visited national museum, with the annual number of visitors close to 6 million people. See getting here. The collection spans the entire history of coinage from its origins in the 7th century BC to the present day and is representative of both the East and West. Your support is vital, now more than ever, and helps the Museum to share the collection with the world. [10], At that time, Sloane's collection consisted of around 71,000 objects of all kinds[11] including some 40,000 printed books, 7,000 manuscripts, extensive natural history specimens including 337 volumes of dried plants, prints and drawings including those by Albrecht Dürer and antiquities from Sudan, Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Ancient Near and Far East and the Americas. This has been criticised by heritage groups as out-of-character with the historic building. In 1816 these masterpieces of western art were acquired by The British Museum by Act of Parliament and deposited in the museum thereafter. This left the museum with antiquities; coins, medals and paper money; prints & drawings; and ethnography. The British Museum – Assyrian Sculpture, pp. In the same year the Act of Parliament establishing the British Library was passed, separating the collection of manuscripts and printed books from the British Museum. [27] The neoclassical architect, Sir Robert Smirke, was asked to draw up plans for an eastern extension to the museum "... for the reception of the Royal Library, and a Picture Gallery over it ..."[28] and put forward plans for today's quadrangular building, much of which can be seen today. [32], The natural history collections were an integral part of the British Museum until their removal to the new British Museum of Natural History in 1887, nowadays the Natural History Museum. The second-floor galleries have a selection of the museum's collection of 140 mummies and coffins, the largest outside Cairo. The courtyard at the centre of the British Museum was one of London's long-lost spaces. W. K. Loftus excavated in Nimrud between 1850 and 1855 and found a remarkable hoard of ivories in the Burnt Palace. The British Museum is located on Great Russell Street near Russell Square and can be accessed easily from several London Underground stations. The British Museum: 250 Years. WA Museum Boola Bardip has a range of stunning spaces available for meetings, corporate events and weddings. London: The British Museum Press, p. 16. The facsimile reunites the text, now divided between the British Library (347 leaves; known as British Library, Additional 43725), the University Library in Leipzig, Germany (43 leaves), Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai (some ... On the upper floor, there are galleries devoted to smaller material from ancient Italy, Greece, Cyprus and the Roman Empire. [53] The museum is faced with Portland stone, but the perimeter walls and other parts of the building were built using Haytor granite from Dartmoor in South Devon, transported via the unique Haytor Granite Tramway.[54]. The architect Sir John James Burnet was petitioned to put forward ambitious long-term plans to extend the building on all three sides. As a result, a large numbers of Lamassu's, palace reliefs, stelae, including the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, were brought to the British Museum. The first national museum in the world, the British Museum was established by parliament when physician Sir Hans Sloane passed on 71,000 items to King George II for the nation after his death in 1753. Antiquities from excavations started to come to the museum in the latter part of the 19th century as a result of the work of the Egypt Exploration Fund under the efforts of E.A. In 1895 the trustees purchased the 69 houses surrounding the museum with the intention of demolishing them and building around the west, north and east sides of the museum. A curatorial scope that encompasses both archaeological and contemporary material, including both unique masterpieces of artistry and objects of everyday life. Altogether the British Museum showcases on public display less than 1%[60] of its entire collection, approximately 50,000 items. You're advised to. We apologise for any inconvenience caused. We kindly ask you to contact us if you no longer need your ticket so that we're able to reallocate it. The estimated footage of the various libraries as reported to the trustees has been summarised by Harris (1998), 3,6: Sloane 4,600, Harley 1,700, Cotton 384, Edwards 576, The Royal Library 1,890. – Felix Magazine", "Greenpeace activists scale British Museum to protest BP sponsorship", "Campaigners protest against BP sponsorship of British Museum", "Trustee resigns from British Museum over BP", "British Museum staff join outcry against BP sponsorship", "Mary Beard blocked by No 10 as British Museum trustee 'for pro-Europe views, "The Transcultural Roots of Modernism: Imagist Poetry, Japanese Visual Culture, and the Western Museum System", The British Museum Library: a Short History and Survey, Amun in the form of a ram protecting King Taharqa, Kition Necropolis Phoenician inscriptions, Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture, Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising, Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret, Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest, Minister of State for Digital and Culture, Hungerford Bridge and Golden Jubilee Bridges, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=British_Museum&oldid=1042630990, Cultural infrastructure completed in 1847, Cultural infrastructure completed in 2000, Grade I listed buildings in the London Borough of Camden, Greek Revival architecture in the United Kingdom, Horological museums in the United Kingdom, Museums of ancient Greece in the United Kingdom, Museums of ancient Rome in the United Kingdom, Museums sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Non-departmental public bodies of the United Kingdom government, Articles with dead external links from January 2016, Articles with dead external links from June 2016, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with failed verification from April 2016, Articles needing additional references from January 2019, All articles needing additional references, Articles with unsourced statements from April 2007, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Flint knife with an ivory handle (known as the, Ivory statuette of a king, from the early temple at. By the 1970s the museum was again expanding. The British Museum: A History. You can enjoy tea, coffee, light bites and hot food at the Great Court Café. The Duveen Gallery, sited to the west of the Egyptian, Greek & Assyrian sculpture galleries, was designed to house the Elgin Marbles by the American Beaux-Arts architect John Russell Pope. Reveals the influence of Islam in the birth of American religious freedom, describing how Jefferson studied the Qur'an because he believed that Islam's Enlightenment ideals could inform the fledgling country's practical governance. Active support by the museum for excavations in Egypt continued to result in important acquisitions throughout the 20th century until changes in antiquities laws in Egypt led to the suspension of policies allowing finds to be exported, although divisions still continue in Sudan. Its permanent collection of some eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence,[3] having been widely collected during the era of the British Empire. Nigeria. If you require assistance or the entrance into the Museum poses an accessibility barrier, please let our uniformed staff know and they'll be happy to assist you. [17][d], With the acquisition of Montagu House, the first exhibition galleries and reading room for scholars opened on 15 January 1759. Archaeology was in its infancy during the nineteenth century and many pioneering individuals began excavating sites across the Classical world, chief among them for the museum were Charles Newton, John Turtle Wood, Robert Murdoch Smith and Charles Fellows. The British Museum. Stone Age (c. 3.4 million years BC – c. 2000 BC), Early Mediaeval (c. 4th century AD – c. 1000 AD), Renaissance to Modern (c. 1500 AD – present), The many hoards of treasure include those of Esquiline, Carthage, First Cyprus, Hockwold, Hoxne, Lampsacus, Mildenhall, Vale of York and Water Newton, (4th–10th centuries AD), Room 2 – Handaxe, Lower Palaeolithic, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, c. 1.2 million years BC, Room 3 – Swimming Reindeer carving, France, c. 13,000 years BC[81], Room 2 – Ain Sakhri lovers, from the cave of Ain Sakhri, near Bethlehem, c. 9000 BC[82], Room 51 – Mold gold cape, North Wales, Bronze Age, c. 1900–1600 BC, Room 50 - Wandsworth Shield, Iron Age shield boss in La Tène style, England, 2nd century BC, Room 50 - Gold torc found in Needwood Forest, central England, 75 BC, Room 49 - Bronze head of a Roman Emperor Claudius, from Rendham in Suffolk, eastern England, 1st century AD, Room 49 – Hinton St Mary Mosaic with face of Christ in the centre, from Dorset, southern England, 4th century AD, Room 49 - Corbridge Lanx, silver tray depicting a shrine to Apollo, northern England, 4th century AD, Room 41 - Silver objects from the Roman Coleraine Hoard, Northern Ireland, 4th-5th centuries AD, Room 41 – Sutton Hoo helmet, Anglo-Saxon, England, early 7th century AD, Room 40 - Ivory statue of Virgin and Child, who is crushing a dragon under her left foot from Paris, France, 1310-1330 AD, Room 40 - Chaucer Astrolabe, the oldest dated in Europe, 1326 AD, Room 40 – Royal Gold Cup or Saint Agnes Cup, made in Paris, France, 1370–80 AD, Room 2a – Holy Thorn Reliquary, made in Paris, c. 1390s AD, Room 38 – Mechanical Galleon clock, Augsburg, Germany, around 1585 AD, Room 38 - Carillon clock with automata by Isaac Habrecht, Switzerland, 1589 AD, Room 39 - Ornate clock made by Thomas Tompion, England, 1690 AD, The scope of the Department of Asia is extremely broad; its collections of over 75,000 objects cover the material culture of the whole Asian continent (from East, South, Central and South-East Asia) and from the Neolithic up to the present day. , numbering some 8 million where is the british museum located, is a charge for them but they exceptionally! 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