All the while, the collections kept growing. The collection contains the unique set of watercolours by the pioneering colonist John White, the first British artist in America and first European to paint Native Americans. The museum turned increasingly towards private funds for buildings, acquisitions and other purposes.[43]. A long suite of rooms (Gallery 25) on the lower floor display African art. This series was started in 1978 and was originally called Occasional Papers. [92] However, the Paul Hamlyn Library, which had become the central reference library of the British Museum and the only library there freely open to the general public, closed permanently in August 2011. [89] In addition, the Māori collection is the finest outside New Zealand with many intricately carved wooden and jade objects and the Aboriginal art collection is distinguished by its wide range of bark paintings, including two very early bark etchings collected by John Hunter Kerr. The evacuation was timely, for in 1940 the Duveen Gallery was severely damaged by bombing. In the early 20th century excavations were carried out at Carchemish, Turkey by D. G. Hogarth and Leonard Woolley, the latter assisted by T. E. Lawrence. Other areas damaged during World War II bombing included: in September 1940 two unexploded bombs hit the Edward VII galleries, the King's Library received a direct hit from a high explosive bomb, incendiaries fell on the dome of the Round Reading Room but did little damage; on the night of 10 to 11 May 1941 several incendiaries fell on the south-west corner of the museum, destroying the book stack and 150,000 books in the courtyard and the galleries around the top of the Great Staircase – this damage was not fully repaired until the early 1960s.[56]. 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. There was not enough money to put up more new buildings, and so the houses in the other streets are nearly all still standing. Explore the British Museum collection and journey through two million years of human history. [47] Popular exhibitions including "Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum" and "Ice Age Art" are credited with helping fuel the increase in visitors. [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. These terms are still observed, and the collection occupies room 2a. A representative selection of Iron Age artefacts from Hallstatt were acquired as a result of the Evans/Lubbock excavations and from Giubiasco in Ticino through the Swiss National Museum. The Reading Room is open to any member of the public who wishes to read there. It was granted planning permission in December 2009 and was completed in time for the Viking exhibition in March 2014. [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. Letter to Charles Long (1823), BMCE115/3,10. Today the museum no longer houses collections of natural history, and the books and manuscripts it once held now form part of the independent British Library. The King's Library, on the ground floor of the East Wing, was handed over in 1827, and was described as one of the finest rooms in London. Protesters also smuggled a four-metre Trojan horse on to the museum's forecourt. [98] The British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, among others, have been asked since 2009 to open their archives for investigation by a team of Chinese investigators as a part of an international mission to document lost national treasures. Scrapbooks and illustrations of the Museum. [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 later Sasanian Empire is also well represented by ornate silver plates and cups, many representing ruling monarchs hunting lions and deer. 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. There are groups of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, (including his only surviving full-scale cartoon), Dürer (a collection of 138 drawings is one of the finest in existence), Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt, Claude and Watteau, and largely complete collections of the works of all the great printmakers including Dürer (99 engravings, 6 etchings and most of his 346 woodcuts), Rembrandt and Goya. He later uncovered the Palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh with 'no less than seventy-one halls'. The British Museum clarified that the change was purely logistical to save space in the main museum entrance and did not reflect any escalation in threat.[115]. London: The British Museum Press, p. 16. [3][failed verification][59] In addition to 21,600 m2 (232,000 sq. Prehistoric objects from the region include a bird-shaped pestle and a group of stone mortars from Papua New Guinea. These works, which included the famed Rosetta Stone, were the first important group of large sculptures to be acquired by the museum. The collections represent the civilisations of the ancient Near East and its adjacent areas. This left the museum with antiquities; coins, medals and paper money; prints & drawings; and ethnography. However, the lack of a large temporary exhibition space has led to the £135 million World Conservation and Exhibition Centre to provide one and to concentrate all the museum's conservation facilities into one Conservation Centre. Although the collections centre on Mesopotamia, most of the surrounding areas are well represented. Objects from this department are mostly on display in several galleries on the ground and lower floors. A high proportion of the collection 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-after exhibits by visitors to the museum. A collection of immense importance for its range and quality, it includes objects of all periods from virtually every site of importance in Egypt and the Sudan. [41] In 1962 the Duveen Gallery was finally restored and the Parthenon Sculptures were moved back into it, once again at the heart of the museum.[g]. The dilapidated Old Montagu House was demolished and work on the King's Library Gallery began in 1823. A pressing problem was finding space for additions to the library which now required an extra 1 1⁄4 miles (2.0 km) of shelving each year. Other groups of artifacts represented in the department include the national collection of (c.100) icon paintings, most of which originate from the Byzantine Empire and Russia, and over 40 mediaeval astrolabes from across Europe and the Middle East. Learn how the Museum shares its collection and expertise across the UK. Trustee appointments are governed by the regulatory framework set out in the code of practice on public appointments issued by the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments.[52]. The department has also benefited greatly from the legacy of pioneering anthropologists such as AC Haddon, Bronisław Malinowski and Katherine Routledge. After the defeat of the French campaign in the Battle of the Nile, in 1801, the British Museum acquired more Egyptian sculptures and in 1802 King George III presented the Rosetta Stone – key to the deciphering of hieroglyphs. The science department[91] 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. The collection encompasses architectural, sculptural and epigraphic items from many other sites across the classical world including Amathus, Aphrodisias, Delos, Iasos, Idalion, Kalymnos, Kerch, Rhamnous, Salamis, Sestos, Sounion, Tomis and Thessanoloki. The museum's various libraries hold in excess of 350,000 books, journals and pamphlets covering all areas of the museum's collection. We use cookies to make our website work more efficiently, to provide you with more personalised services or advertising to you, and to analyse traffic on our website. Woolley went on to excavate Ur between 1922 and 1934, discovering the 'Royal Cemeteries' of the 3rd millennium BC. In 1882, the museum was involved in the establishment of the independent Egypt Exploration Fund (now Society) the first British body to carry out research in Egypt. [17][d], With the acquisition of Montagu House, the first exhibition galleries and reading room for scholars opened on 15 January 1759. Most of the houses in Montague Place were knocked down a few years after the sale. The British Museum – The Elgin Marbles, p. 85 (B.F.Cook, 2005. In May 2016, the British Museum was temporarily closed after Greenpeace climbers unfurled eight banners down the front columns of the British Museum in protest at BP's sponsorship of an exhibition about Ancient Egypt. A large number of Chinese antiquities were purchased from the Anglo-Greek banker George Eumorfopoulos in the 1930s. Phone: +44 (0)20 7323 8224. In the 1840s and 1850s the museum supported excavations in Assyria by A.H. Layard and others at sites such as Nimrud and Nineveh. 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. Egyptian antiquities have formed part of the British Museum collection ever since its foundation in 1753 after receiving 160 Egyptian objects[67] from Sir Hans Sloane. [26], In 1802 a buildings committee was set up to plan for expansion of the museum, and further highlighted by the donation in 1822 of the King's Library, personal library of King George III's, comprising 65,000 volumes, 19,000 pamphlets, maps, charts and topographical drawings. The British Museum, in the Bloomsbury area of London, United Kingdom, is a public institution dedicated to human history, art and culture. In 1931, the art dealer Sir Joseph Duveen offered funds to build a gallery for the Parthenon sculptures. Its permanent collection of some eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence, having been widely sourced during the era of the British Empire. A whole suite of rooms on the ground floor display the sculptured reliefs from the Assyrian palaces at Nineveh, Nimrud and Khorsabad, while 8 galleries on the upper floor hold smaller material from ancient sites across the Middle East. Objects from the Department of Greece and Rome are located throughout the museum, although many of the architectural monuments are to be found on the ground floor, with connecting galleries from Gallery 5 to Gallery 23. Many individuals have added to the department's collection over the years but those assembled by Henry Christy, Harry Beasley and William Oldman are outstanding.