On this date in 1683 the oldest public museum, the Ashmolean, was opened by Elias Ashmole in Oxford. 10 things you might not know about it:
It originated from a “cabinet of curiosities”, a collection of geological specimens, antique coins, books and zoological specimens collected by the gardener John Tradescant the Elder and his son, John Tradescant the Younger. The collection was inherited by one Elias Ashmole, who donated it to Oxford University.
One of the items in the collection was a stuffed Dodo, the last ever dodo seen in Europe. However, by 1755 the stuffed dodo was so moth-eaten that it was destroyed, except for its head and one claw.
In the early days, people who wished to view the collection were charged according to the amount of time they spent in the museum, rather than a flat rate.
The naturalist Robert Plot was the first keeper.
The first Museum was opened on Broad Street in Oxford in a building sometimes attributed to Sir Christopher Wren or Thomas Wood. It moved to its current location in Beaumont Street in 1894. The present Ashmolean Museum building was designed in the Neoclassical style by C.R. Cockerel. The old building is now the History of Science Museum.
In 2000, the Chinese Picture Gallery, designed by van Heyningen and Haward Architects, opened at the entrance. It is the only museum gallery in Britain devoted to Chinese paintings.
Other famous paintings you will find here include: The Hunt in the Forest, painted around 1470, by Italian artist Paolo Uccello. The subject matter is unusual for this period because religious paintings were the usual order of the day. The painting shows early use of perspective; The High Street, Oxford, painted by JMW Turner in 1810, Turner's only full-size townscape in oils; John Constable’s Willy Lott's House from the Stour (The Valley Farm), which is the building in his more famous painting The Hay Wain from a different angle. There are also drawings by Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci and paintings by Pablo Picasso, Anthony van Dyck, Peter Paul Rubens, Paul Cézanne and Titian.
Other items include: a Viking hoard that was discovered near Watlington in South Oxfordshire in 2015; a collection of 61 historic English embroideries which span the whole of the seventeenth century; The Messiah Stradivarius, a Violin made by Antonio Stradivari; Arab ceremonial dress owned by Lawrence of Arabia; the death mask of Oliver Cromwell and the lantern that Gunpowder Plot conspirator Guy Fawkes carried in 1605.
The museum featured in episodes of Inspector Morse and Lewis. the painting The Hunt in the Forest (see fact 7) is a key plot element in the episode Point of Vanishing where the characters are instructed on the painting’s features by an art expert before solving the case.
There’s a real life unsolved art theft mystery associated with the museum as well. The theft took place 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. As they just took the one painting and it has never been offered for sale it is speculated that this was a case of an artwork stolen to order. To this day, the painting’s whereabouts are unknown.
New!!!
The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.
Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.
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