![]() ![]() Cabinet of curiosities (1753–1778) The Rosetta Stone on display in the British Museum in 1874 The addition of the Cotton and Harley manuscripts introduced a literary and antiquarian element, and meant that the British Museum now became both National Museum and library. Sloane's collection, while including a vast miscellany of objects, tended to reflect his scientific interests. The British Museum was the first of a new kind of museum – national, belonging to neither church nor king, freely open to the public and aiming to collect everything. 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 manuscript of Beowulf. They were joined in 1757 by the "Old Royal Library", now the Royal manuscripts, assembled by various British monarchs. 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. ![]() On 7 June 1753, King George II gave his royal assent to the Act of Parliament which established the British Museum. Īt that time, Sloane's collection consisted of around 71,000 objects of all kinds 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. During the course of his lifetime, and particularly after he married the widow of a wealthy Jamaican planter, 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. Its foundations lie in the will of the Anglo-Irish physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753), a London-based doctor and scientist from Ulster. History Sir Hans Sloane Sir Hans SloaneĪlthough today principally a museum of cultural art objects and antiquities, the British Museum was founded as a "universal museum". The museum is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and as with all national museums in the UK it charges no admission fee, except for loan exhibitions. In 1973, the British Library Act 1972 detached the library department from the British Museum, but it continued to host the now separated British Library in the same Reading Room and building as the museum until 1997. The right to ownership of some of its most well-known acquisitions, notably the Greek Elgin Marbles and the Egyptian Rosetta Stone, is subject to long-term disputes and repatriation claims. The museum's expansion over the following 250 years was largely a result of British colonisation and resulted in the creation of several branch institutions, or independent spin-offs, the first being the Natural History Museum in 1881. It first opened to the public in 1759, in Montagu House, on the site of the current building. The museum was established in 1753, largely based on the collections of the Anglo-Irish physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane. It ranked third in the list of most-visited art museums in the world. ![]() In 2022 the museum received 4,097,253 visitors, an increase of 209 per cent from 2021. The British Museum was the first public national museum to cover all fields of knowledge. It documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. ![]() The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. The Great Court was developed in 2001 and surrounds the original Reading Room. Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DG, England, United KingdomĤ,097,253 (2022) (up 209 per cent from 2021) ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |