british museum

The British Museum in London is one of the world's largest and most important museums of human history and culture. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects from all continents, illustrate and document the story of human culture from its beginning to the present. As with all other national museums and art galleries in Britain, the Museum charges no admission fee, although charges are levied for some temporary special exhibitions.

It was established in 1753 and was based largely on the collections of the physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane. The museum first opened to the public on 15 January 1759 in Montagu House in Bloomsbury, on the site of the current museum building. Its expansion over the following two and a half centuries has resulted in the creation of several branch institutions, the first being the British Museum (Natural History) in South Kensington in 1887. Until 1997, when the British Library opened to the public, the British Museum was unique in that it housed both a national museum of antiquities and a national library in the same building. Its present chairman is Sir John Boyd and its director is Neil MacGregor.

History

Though principally a museum of cultural art objects and antiquities today, the British Museum was founded as a "universal museum". This is reflected in the first bequest by Sir Hans Sloane, comprising some 40,000 printed books, 7,000 manuscripts, extensive natural history specimens, prints by Albrecht Dürer and antiquities from Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Middle and Far East and the Americas. The Foundation Act, passed on 7 June 1753, added two other libraries to the Sloane collection. The Cottonian Library, assembled by Sir Robert Cotton, dated back to Elizabethan times and the Harleian library was the collection of the first and second Earls of Oxford. They were joined in 1757 by the Royal Library assembled by various British monarchs. Together these four "Foundation collections" included many of the most treasured books now in the British Library, including the Lindisfarne Gospels and the sole surviving copy of Beowulf.

The body of trustees (which until 1963 was chaired by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor and the Speaker of the House of Commons) decided on Montagu House as a location for the museum, which it bought from the Montagu family for £20,000. The Trustees rejected Buckingham House, on a site now occupied by Buckingham Palace, on the grounds of cost and the unsuitability of its location.

After its foundation the British Museum received several gifts, including the Thomason Library and David Garrick's library of 1,000 printed plays, but had few ancient relics and would have been unrecognisable to visitors of the modern museum. The first notable addition to the collection of antiquities was by Sir William Hamilton, British Ambassador to Naples, who sold his collection of Greek and Roman artifacts to the museum in 1782. In the early 19th century the foundations for the extensive collection of sculpture began to be laid. After the defeat of the French in the Battle of the Nile in 1801 the British Museum acquired more Egyptian sculpture and the Rosetta Stone. Many Greek sculptures followed, notably the Towneley collection in 1805 and the Elgin Marbles in 1816.

The collection soon outgrew its surroundings and the situation became urgent with the donation in 1822 of King George III's personal library of 65,000 volumes, 19,000 pamphlets, maps, charts and topographical drawings to the museum. The dilapidated Old Montagu House was demolished in 1845 and replaced by a design by the neoclassical architect Sir Robert Smirke.

Roughly contemporary with the construction of the new building was the career of a man sometimes called the "second founder" of the British Museum, the Italian librarian Antonio Panizzi. Under his supervision the British Museum Library quintupled in size and became a well-organised institution worthy of being called a national library. The quadrangle at the centre of Smirke's design proved to be a waste of valuable space and was filled at Panizzi's request by a circular Reading Room of cast iron, designed by Smirke's brother, Sydney Smirke. This is where Karl Marx famously carried out much of his research, and wrote some of his most important works.

The natural history collections were an integral part of the British Museum until their removal to the new British Museum (Natural History), now the Natural History Museum, in 1887. The ethnography collections were until recently housed in the short-lived Museum of Mankind in Piccadilly; they have now returned to Bloomsbury and the Department of Ethnography has been renamed the Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas.

The temporary exhibition Treasures of Tutankhamun, held by the British Museum in 1972, was the most successful in British history, attracting 1,694,117 visitors. 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. The Government suggested a site at St Pancras for the new British Library but the books did not leave the museum until 1997.

With the bookstacks in the central courtyard of the museum now empty, the process of demolition for Lord Foster's glass-roofed Great Court could begin. The Great Court, opened in 2000, while undoubtedly improving circulation around the museum, was criticised for having a lack of exhibition space at a time when the museum was in serious financial difficulties and many galleries were closed to the public. In 2002 the museum was even closed for a day when its staff protested about proposed redundancies. A few weeks later the theft of a small Greek statue was blamed on lack of security staff.

Controversy

It is a point of controversy whether museums should be allowed to possess artefacts taken from other countries, and the British Museum is a notable target for criticism. The Parthenon Marbles and the Benin Bronzes are among the most disputed objects in its collections, and organisations have been formed demanding the return of both sets of artefacts to their native countries of Greece and Nigeria respectively.

The British Museum has refused to return either set, or any of its other disputed items, stating 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".[2] The Museum has also argued that the British Museum Act of 1963 legally prevents it from selling any of its valuable artefacts, even the ones not on display. Critics have particularly argued against the right of the British Museum to own objects which it does not share with the public.

Supporters of the Museum claim that it has provided protection for artefacts that may have otherwise been damaged or destroyed if they had been left in their original environments. While some critics have accepted this, they also argue that the artefacts should now be returned to their countries of origin if there is sufficient expertise and desire there to preserve them.

The British Museum continues to assert that it is an appropriate custodian and has an inalienable right to its disputed artefacts under British law.

The Building

The current structure replaced Montagu House of 1686.

The Greek Revival façade facing Great Russell Street is a characteristic building of Sir Robert Smirke, with 44 columns in the Ionic order 13.7 metres (45 ft) high, closely based on those of the temple of Athena Polias at Priene in Asia Minor. The pediment over the main entrance is decorated by sculptures by Sir Richard Westmacott depicting The Progress of Civilisation, consisting of fifteen allegorical figures, installed in 1852.

The construction commenced around the courtyard with the East Wing (The King's Library) in 1823-28, followed by the North Wing in 1833-38, original this housed amongst other galleries a reading room now the Wellcome Gallery, work was also progressing on the northern half of the West Wing (The Egyptian Sculpture Gallery) 1826-31, then Montagu House was demolished from 1842 to make room for the final part of the West Wing completed in 1846 and the South Wing with its great colonnade, this was initiated in 1843, and completed in 1847 when the Front Hall and Great Staircase were opened to the public.^[1]

In 1846 Robert Smirke was replaced as the Museum's architect by his brother Sydney Smirke, whose major addition was the Round Reading Room 1854-57; at 42.6 metres (140 ft) in diameter it was then the second widest dome in the world, the Pantheon in Rome being slightly wider.

The next major addition was the White Wing 1882-84 added behind the eastern end of the South Front, the architect being Sir John Taylor.

In 1895 the Trustees purchased the 69 houses surronding the Museum with the intention of demolishing them and building around the West, North and East sides of the Museum new galleries that would completely fill the block on which the Museum stands. Of this grand plan only the Edward VII galleries in the centre of the North Front were ever constructed, these were built 1906-14 to the design of Sir John James Burnet and now house the Asian and Islamic collections.

The Duveen Gallery housing the Elgin Marbles was designed by the American Beaux-Arts architect John Russell Pope. Although completed in 1938 it was hit by a bomb in 1940 and remained semi-derelict for 22 years before reopening in 1962.

The Queen Elizabeth II Great Court is a covered square at the centre of the British Museum designed by the engineers Buro Happold and the architects Foster and Partners^[2]. The Great Court opened in December 2000 and is the largest covered square in Europe. The roof is a glass and steel construction with 1,656 uniquely shaped panes of glass. At the centre of the Great Court is the Reading Room vacated by the British Library, its functions now moved to St Pancras. The Reading Room is open to any member of the public who wishes to read there.

Currently there are nearly one hundred galleries open to the public although the less popular have restricted opening times.

The Departments

The British Museum has some 8 million objects in its collections.

Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan

The British Museum houses the world's most comprehensive collection of Egyptian antiquities outside Cairo. It is an unequalled collection of immense importance for its range and quality, comprising objects of all periods from virtually every site of importance in Egypt and the Sudan. Objects illustrating every aspect of the cultures of the Nile Valley, from the Neolithic period (c. 10 000 BC) until Coptic (Christian) times (12th century AD).

A high proportion of the collection of more than 120,000 objects comes from tombs or contexts associated with the cult of the dead, and it is these pieces, in particular the mummies, that remain among the most eagerly-sought exhibits by visitors to the Museum.

The collection currently stands at over 120,000 objects. Comparably, the other great collections of the world can be found at The Egyptian Museum, Cairo (200,000 objects), Musée du Louvre, Paris (50,000 objects), Petrie Museum, London (80,000 objects), the Museo Egizio, Turin (32,500 objects), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (36,000 objects) and the Neues Museum, Berlin (25,000 objects).

Department of Asia

The scope of the Department of Asia is extremely broad: its collections cover the material culture of the whole Asian continent (from East Asia, South and Central Asia, South-East Asia and the Islamic world) and from the Neolithic up to the present day.

Key highlights of the collections include:

• The most comprehensive collection of sculpture from the Indian subcontinent in the world, including the celebrated Buddhist limestone reliefs from Amaravati
• An outstanding collection of Chinese antiquities, paintings, and porcelain, lacquer, bronze, jade, and other applied arts
• A fine collection of Buddhist paintings from Dunhuang in Central Asia and the Admonitions Scroll by Gu Kaizhi
• A broad range of Islamic pottery, paintings, tiles, metalwork, glass, seals, and inscriptions.
• The most comprehensive collection of Japanese pre-20th century decorative arts in the western world

Department of the Ancient Near East

With approximately 280,000 objects in the collection, the British Museum has the greatest collection of Mesopotamian antiquities outside Iraq. The holdings of Assyrian, Babylonian and Sumerian antiquities are among the most comprehensive in the world.

The collection includes iconic winged human-headed bulls and stone bas-reliefs that were found in the palaces of the Assyrian kings at Nimrud and Nineveh, the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal and Sumerian treasures found in a royal cemetery at Ur of the Chaldees.

A representative selection, including the most important pieces, are on display and total some 4500 objects. The remainder form the study collection which ranges in size from beads to large sculptures. They include approximately 130,000 cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia.

Contemporary collections can be found in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (90,000 objects), The Oriental Institute of Art, Chicago (22,000 objects), Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin (15,000 objects) and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (7,000 objects).

Key highlights of the collections include:

Nimrud (City in Northern Iraq)

Alabaster bas-reliefs from:

• The North-West Palace of Ashurnasirpal II
• Central- Palace of Tiglath-Pileser III,
• South-West Palace of Esarhaddon
• Palace of Adad-Nirari III
• South-East Palace ('Burnt Palace')
• The Nabu Temple (Ezida)
• The Sharrat-Niphi Temple
• Temple of Ninurta

Sculptures

• Pair of Human Headed Winged 'Lamassu' Lions
• Human Headed Winged 'Lamassu' Bull, complementary piece in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• Human Headed Winged 'Lamassu' Lion, complementary piece in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• Colossal Statue of a Lion
• Rare Head of Human Headed Winged 'Lamassu', recovered from the remains of the South-West Palace of Esarhaddon
• The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III

Nineveh (City in Northern Iraq)

Alabaster bas-reliefs from:

• North-Palace of Ashurbanipal
• Famous Royal Lion Hunt Scenes
• The 'Dying Lion', long been acclaimed as a masterpiece
• The 'Garden Party' Relief
• The White Obelisk, Some of the earliest scenes of Assyrian narrative art
• South-West Palace of Sennacherib

Royal Library of Ashurbanipal

• A large collection of cuneiform tablets of enormous importance approximately 22,000 inscribed clay tablets, now located in the British Museum
• The Flood Tablet, relating part of the Epic of Gilgamesh

Khorsabad (City in Northern Iraq)

• Alabaster bas-reliefs from the Palace of Sargon II
• Pair of Human Headed Winged 'Lamassu' Bulls

Wider Museum Collection

• Cyrus Cylinder from Babylon
• Bronze gates of Shalmaneser III and Ashurnasirpal II from Balawat
• A fine collection of Urartian bronzes, which now form the core of the Anatolian collection
• Oxus Treasure
• The Standard of Ur
• The 'Ram in a Thicket'
• The Royal Game of Ur
• Queen's Lyre

Department of Coins and Medals

The British Museum is home to one of the world's finest numismatic collections, comprising about one million objects. The collection spans the entire history of coinage from its origins in the 7th century BC to the present day.

There are approximately 9,000 coins, medals and banknotes on display around the British Museum. More than half of these can be found in the HSBC Money Gallery (Gallery 68), while the remainder form part of the permanent displays throughout the Museum.

Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities

The Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities of the British Museum has one of the world's most comprehensive collections of antiquities from the Classical world, with over 100,000 objects. These mostly range in date from the beginning of the Greek Bronze Age (about 3200BC) to the reign of the Roman emperor Constantine in the 4th century AD, with some pagan survivals.

The Cycladic, Minoan and Mycenaean cultures are represented, and the Greek collection includes important sculpture from the Parthenon in Athens, as well as elements of two of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos and the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos.

The Department also houses one of the widest-ranging collections of Italic and Etruscan antiquities and extensive groups of material from Cyprus. The collections of ancient jewellery and bronzes, Greek vases and Roman glass and silver are particularly important.

Key highlights of the collections include:

Bassae Sculptures

• Sculptures from the temple of Apollo Epikourios ('Helper') at Bassae in Arcadia.
• Twenty three surviving blocks of the frieze from the interior of the temple are exhibited on an upper level.

Athenian Akropolis

The Parthenon Gallery ("Elgin Marbles")

• The Parthenon Marbles are one of the finest manifestations of human creation. The Magnificent Relief Frieze showing the Panathenaic procession is considered as the most famous surviving example of art from Ancient Greece, often praised as the finest achievement of Greek architecture, Its decorative sculptures are considered one of the high points of Greek art.

Erechtheion

• The Finest of 6 remaining Caryatids
• Surviving Column

Athena Nike

• Surviving Frieze Slabs

Mausoleum of Halikarnassos

One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

• Two colossal free-standing figures identified as Maussollos and his wife Artemisia.
• Part of an impressive horse from the chariot group adorning the summit of the Mausoleum
• The Amazonomachy frieze - A long section of relief frieze showing the battle between Greeks and Amazons

Temple of Artemis at Ephesos

One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

• Architectiral fragments from the Archaic and fourth century temples of Artemis
• Marble column drum from the later Temple of Artemis

Asia Minor ('Turkey')

Nereid Monument

• Partial reconstruction of the Monument, a large and elaborate Lykian tomb from the site of Xanthos in south-west Turkey
• Payava Tomb from Xanthos in south west Turkey

Wider Museum Collection

• Material from the Palace of Knossos
• Portland Vase
• The Warren Cup
• Discus-thrower (discobolos)
• Townley Sculptures

Africa, Oceania and the Americas: The collection mainly consists of 19th- and 20th-century items although the Inca, Aztec, Maya and other early cultures are well represented; collecting of modern artefacts is ongoing.

Horniman (80,000 objects) Pitt Rivers Museum ( Musée du quai Branly (300,000 objects) Boston Museum of Fine Arts (100,000 Japanese pieces) Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (11,000 object) Brooklyn Museum (11,000 objects)

Prehistory and Europe: The prehistoric collections cover Europe, Africa and Asia, the earliest African artefacts being around 2,000,000 years old. Coverage of Europe extends to the present day.

Prints and Drawings: This department covers Western graphic art from the 15th century to the present, containing around 50,000 drawings and 2,000,000 prints.

Conservation, Documentation and Science: This department was founded in 1924. Conservation has six specialist areas: ceramics & glass; metals; organic material (including textiles); stone, wall paintings and mosaics; Eastern pictorial art and Western pictorial art. The science department has and continues to develop techniques to date artefacts, analyse and identify the materials used in their manufacture, to identify the place an artifact originated and the techniques used in their creation. The deparment also publishes its findings and discoveries.

Learning and Information: This department covers all levels of education, from casual visitors, schools, degree level and beyond. The Museum's various libraries hold in excess of 350,000 books, journals & pamphlets covering all areas of the museum's collection. Also the general Museum archives which date from its foundation in 1753 are overseen by this department; the indivdual departments have their own separate archives covering their various areas of responsibility.

The Collections

Highlights of the collections include:

• The Elgin Marbles, carvings from the Athenian Parthenon
• The Portland Vase
• The Rosetta Stone
• The Stein collection from Central Asia
• The Clock Room
• Works by Albrecht Dürer: more than 100 drawings and 900 prints
• Egyptian Mummies
• The Benin Bronzes
• The Cyrus Cylinder and many other Persian artifacts
• Anglo-Saxon artifacts from the Sutton Hoo burial
• The Lewis Chessmen
• The Mold cape (a Bronze age gold ceremonial cape)
• The basalt moai (statue) Hoa Hakananai'a from Easter Island
• The Mildenhall Treasure

The notorious Cupboard 55 in the Department of Medieval and Later Antiquities, inaccessible by the public and known as "the Secretum", has a reputation for containing some of the most erotic objects in the British Museum. Though claiming to be from ancient cultures, many of the objects are Victorian fakes and are deemed unfit for public display on grounds of quality, rather than because of their supposed obscenity. In any case, the Museum's attitudes to material previously held to be 'obscene' has now changed, as shown by the Warren Cup.

Trivia

• The British Museum, and especially the Reading Room, is a recurring setting in David Lodge's 1965 novel The British Museum Is Falling Down.

• The British Museum is also seen in The Mummy Returns although not from the outside. This view is actually of University College London.

• The British Museum is also the setting for Channel 4's Codex.

Galleries

Joseph E. Hotung Gallery (Asia)

Hellenistic galleries