The British Museum, in the Bloomsbury area of London, United Kingdom, is a public institution dedicated to human history, art and culture. 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. It documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present. It was the first public national museum in the world. The British Museum was established in 1753, largely based on the collections of the Irish physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane. It first opened to the public in 1759, in Montagu House, on the site of the current building.
Introduction
British Museum
British Museum | Introduction
Sir Hans Sloane King George II gave his Royal Assent to the Act of Parliament which established the British Museum. Sir Hans Sloane King George II
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780,000 years ago
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London's British Museum
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Bloomsbury area of London, United Kingdom
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Although today principally a museum of cultural art objects and antiquities, the British Museum was founded as a "universal museum". Its foundations lie in the will of the Irish physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753), a London-based doctor and scientist from Ulster. 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. At 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.
British Museum | Sir Hans Sloane
The British Museum, in the Bloomsbury area of London, United Kingdom, is a public institution dedicated to human history, art and culture. 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. It documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present. It was the first public national museum in the world. The British Museum was established in 1753, largely based on the collections of the Irish physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane. It first opened to the public in 1759, in Montagu House, on the site of the current building.
British Museum | Introduction
The opening of the forecourt in 1852 marked the completion of Robert Smirke's 1823 plan, but already adjustments were having to be made to cope with the unforeseen growth of the collections. Infill galleries were constructed for Assyrian sculptures and Sydney Smirke's Round Reading Room, with space for a million books, opened in 1857. Because of continued pressure on space the decision was taken to move natural history to a new building in South Kensington, which would later become the British Museum of Natural History. 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 Anthony Panizzi.
British Museum | Collecting from the wider world (1850–1875)
On 7 June 1753 the British Museum Act 1753 was passed, authorising the unification of the three collections as the British Museum and establishing the national lottery to fund the purchase of the collections and to provide funds for their maintenance. The trustees settled on Montagu House in Bloomsbury as a home for the new British Museum, opening it to the public for the first time on 15 January 1759. With the British Museum now established numerous other collectors began to donate and bequeath items to the museum's collections, which were further swelled by large quantities of exhibits brought to England in 1771 by the first voyage of James Cook, by a large collection of Egyptian antiquities (including the Rosetta Stone) ceded by the French in the Capitulation of Alexandria, by the 1816 purchase of the Elgin Marbles by the British government who in turn passed them to the museum, and by the 1820 bequest of the vast botanical collections of Joseph Banks.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Background
John Butler Talcott (September 14, 1824 - February 21, 1905) was a New Britain, Connecticut industrialist and philanthropist who founded the New Britain Museum of American Art, the oldest museum dedicated solely to American art.
John Butler Talcott | Introduction
The museum's founder Brian S. McElney was educated in the UK, attending school at Marlborough College where he studied classics and ancient history. He did not go to university but was articled to a solicitors' practice in the City of London, where he qualified in 1956. He then joined the legal firm of Johnston Stokes & Master in Hong Kong, eventually rising to the position of Senior Partner in 1971. During 1973-74 he served as President of the Hong Kong Law Society. He remained as Senior Partner in his practice until 1983, continuing as a consultant until his retirement in 1992.
Museum of East Asian Art, Bath | Museum Founder
The British Museum is a museum of human culture and history located in Bloomsbury, London. British Museum may also refer to:
British Museum (disambiguation) | Introduction
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. Sloane's collection, while including a vast miscellany of objects, tended to reflect his scientific interests. 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.
British Museum | Foundation (1753)
The British Institution was founded in June 1805 by a group of private subscribers who met in the Thatched House Tavern in London. A committee was formed, and in September of that year it purchased the lease of the former Boydell Shakespeare Gallery building at 52 Pall Mall, with 62 years remaining, for a premium of £4,500 and an annual ground rent of £125. The British Institution opened at the Pall Mall site on 18 January 1806. The founding "Hereditory Governors" included Sir George Beaumont, 7th Baronet and Charles Long, 1st Baron Farnborough, both of whom had employed the services of the leading dealer and picture-cleaner William Seguier, and were probably responsible for his appointment as "Superintendent".
British Institution | Founding
On 7 June 1753, King George II gave his Royal Assent to the Act of Parliament which established the British Museum. 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. They were joined in 1757 by the "Old Royal Library", now the Royal manuscripts, 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 manuscript of "Beowulf".
British Museum | Foundation (1753)
The foundation of the collection was that of the Ulster doctor Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753), who allowed his significant collections to be purchased by the British Government at a price well below their market value at the time. This purchase was funded by a lottery. Sloane's collection, which included dried plants, and animal and human skeletons, was initially housed in Montagu House, Bloomsbury, in 1756, which was the home of the British Museum. Most of the Sloane collection had disappeared by the early decades of the nineteenth century. Dr George Shaw (Keeper of Natural History 1806–13) sold many specimens to the Royal College of Surgeons and had periodic "cremations" of material in the grounds of the museum.
Natural History Museum, London | Early history
The British Museum, in the Bloomsbury area of London, United Kingdom, is a public institution dedicated to human history, art and culture. 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. It documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present. It was the first public national museum in the world.
List of Independent Research Organisations in the United Kingdom | British Museum
The museum's origins are in the "New Britain Institute", chartered in 1853 with the goal of fostering education and art in the city, especially among its immigrant population. In 1903, the museum received a bequest of $20,000 from John Butler Talcott to acquire "original modern oil paintings either by native or foreign artists". Talcott's nephew was tonalist Allen Butler Talcott of the Old Lyme Art Colony. Bryson Burroughs, then curator of paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, suggested to museum officials that directing their efforts at acquiring American art would be most cost-effective. The museum took his advice and seldom spent more than $1,000 for any artwork, amassing a collection now worth millions.
New Britain Museum of American Art | History
They were essentially the same group who were to succeed in persuading the government to found the National Gallery in 1824, and whose gifts to it provided most of the early collection. There was a total group of 125 Governors, Directors and Subscribers, paying sums between 100 guineas (56 of them, 35 at 50g., 11 at 10g.) down to one guinea annually. In 1805 the initial subscribers consisted of "One duke, five marquesses, fourteen earls, two viscounts, nine lords, two bishops, four ladies, seven baronets, twenty-two members of parliament, five clergymen and above fifty private gentlemen, bankers and merchants". The Institution had been discussed with the Royal Academy before it was established, and relations were friendly, at least initially, though later there were to be tensions.
British Institution | Founding
The museum was founded in 1989 by Sir Terence Conran. It was originally located by the River Thames near Tower Bridge, and later relocated to Kensington. The museum operates as a registered charity, and all funds generated by ticket sales aid the museum in curating new exhibitions.
Design Museum | History
John added a concern of his own: to inform the British of the outstanding achievements in these arts and crafts … There is a shade of difference here between myself as prospective museum exhibitor and John as educator and promoter of Anglo-American understanding. Both motivations merged in the outcome.” The American Museum in Britain is housed in Claverton Manor, on the outskirts of Bath. The museum opened to the public in July 1961 and in 2011 celebrated its 50th-anniversary with an exhibition of Marilyn Monroe’s dresses and artefacts from the David Gainsborough Roberts’ Collection.
Dallas Pratt | The American Museum in Britain
In 1851, Franks was appointed assistant in the Department of Antiquities of the British Museum. The post was newly founded, and the brief was to develop a collection of "British antiquities". Franks in a 45-year career at the Museum went on to launch five distinct departments. David M. Wilson writes that "In many respects Franks was the second founder of the British Museum".
Augustus Wollaston Franks | At the British Museum
The museum was founded in 1857 under Bennet Woodcroft from the collection of the Royal Society of Arts and surplus items from the Great Exhibition as part of the South Kensington Museum, together with what is now the Victoria and Albert Museum. It included a collection of machinery which became the "Museum of Patents" in 1858, and the "Patent Office Museum" in 1863. This collection contained many of the most famous exhibits of what is now the Science Museum. In 1883, the contents of the Patent Office Museum were transferred to the South Kensington Museum. In 1885, the Science Collections were renamed the "Science Museum" and in 1893 a separate director was appointed.
Science Museum, London | Origin and history
The British Museum Act 1753 established a 42 strong Board of Trustees, which included two representatives each of the Sloane, Cotton, and Harley families, elected representatives and the following ex-officio: Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Chancellor, Speaker of the House of Commons, Lord President of the Council, First Lord of the Treasury, Lord Privy Seal, Lord High Admiral, Lord Steward, Lord Chamberlain, the three Principal Secretaries of State, Bishop of London, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Chief Justice King's Bench, Master of the Rolls, Lord Chief Justice Common Pleas, Attorney General, and Solicitor General. This rose to 50 by the mid-1800s, including the addition of a trustee appointed by the Crown (British Museum Act 1832) and one representative each from the Towneley, Elgin, and Knight families.
List of trustees of the British Museum | Former trustees
The London Museum and Institute of Natural History was a private natural history museum of the Georgian era. It opened to a paying public in 1807. The museum was founded by Edward Donovan at Catherine Street, the Strand, London, England. Unlike William Bullock's Egyptian Hall Donovan's museum focused on specimens found in Great Britain and was a scientific collection arranged according to the Linnaean system. The museum exhibited hundreds of cases of specimens of British mammals, birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, shells, corals, minerals, fossils (or "productions of the Antediluvian World") and botanical specimens. The 1808 catalogue numbers the collection at "nearly thirty thousand individual articles" and describes the museum as "a national academy of the natural history of the country".
London Museum and Institute of Natural History | Introduction
The museum was founded in 1816 with the legacy of the library and art collection of Richard FitzWilliam, 7th Viscount FitzWilliam. The bequest included £100,000 "to cause to be erected a good substantial museum repository". The Fitzwilliam now contains over 500,000 items and is one of the best museums in the United Kingdom. The collection was initially placed in the Perse School building in Free School Lane. It was moved in 1842 to the Old Schools in central Cambridge, which housed the Cambridge University Library. The "Founder's Building" was built during the period 1837–1843 to the designs of George Basevi, completed by C.
Fitzwilliam Museum | Foundation and buildings
He is considered to be one of the founders of the museum along with John Huntington, Horace Kelley, and Jeptha Wade II.
Hinman Hurlbut | Introduction
Several of modern London's major museums were constructed during the 19th century, including the British Museum (built 1823-1852), The National Gallery (built 1832-8), the National Portrait Gallery (founded 1856), and the Tate Britain, which opened in 1897 as the National Gallery of British Art. The British Museum had been established by Act of Parliament in 1753, and housed since that time in the 17th century Montagu House in Bloomsbury. With the donation of the King's Library in 1822, which comprised some 120,000 manuscripts, pamphlets, and drawings assembled by the late George III, a major extension of the Museum was needed.
19th-century London | Museums
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 museum nevertheless preserves its universality in its collections of artefacts representing the cultures of the world, ancient and modern. The original 1753 collection has grown to over 13 million objects at the British Museum, 70 million at the Natural History Museum and 150 million at the British Library. The Round Reading Room, which was designed by the architect Sydney Smirke, opened in 1857. For almost 150 years researchers came here to consult the museum's vast library.
British Museum | The British Museum today
In 1857, Charles Newton was to discover the 4th-century BC Mausoleum of Halikarnassos, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. In the 1840s and 1850s the museum supported excavations in Assyria by A.H. Layard and others at sites such as Nimrud and Nineveh. Of particular interest to curators was the eventual discovery of Ashurbanipal's great library of cuneiform tablets, which helped to make the museum a focus for Assyrian studies. Sir Thomas Grenville (1755–1846), a trustee of the British Museum from 1830, assembled a library of 20,240 volumes, which he left to the museum in his will. The books arrived in January 1847 in twenty-one horse-drawn vans.
British Museum | The largest building site in Europe (1825–1850)
London is home to many museums, galleries, and other institutions, many of which are free of admission charges and are major tourist attractions as well as playing a research role. The first of these to be established was the British Museum in Bloomsbury, in 1753. Originally containing antiquities, natural history specimens, and the national library, the museum now has 7 million artefacts from around the globe. In 1824, the National Gallery was founded to house the British national collection of Western paintings; this now occupies a prominent position in Trafalgar Square. The British Library is one of the largest libraries in the world, and the national library of the United Kingdom.
London | Museums, art galleries and libraries
Hallam was a fellow of the Royal Society, and a trustee of the British Museum. In 1830 he received the gold medal for history founded by George IV.
Henry Hallam | Introduction
Frederick John Horniman (8 October 1835 – 5 March 1906) was an English tea trader and founder of the Horniman Museum in London.
Frederick John Horniman | Introduction
The British Museum, which first opened to the public in 1759 in Montagu House, is at the heart of Bloomsbury. At the centre of the museum the space around the former British Library Reading Room, which was filled with the concrete storage bunkers of the British Library, is today the Queen Elizabeth II Great Court, an indoor square with a glass roof designed by British architect Norman Foster. It houses displays, a cinema, a shop, a cafe and a restaurant. Since 1998, the British Library has been located in a purpose-built building just outside the northern edge of Bloomsbury, in Euston Road.
Bloomsbury | Museums
A wealthy widow, Grace Judd Landers, expected to donate a large amount of money to the museum, but she lost her money in the stock market crash of 1929, and so donated her house as a museum in 1934. Sanford B. D. Low, a son-in-law of William H. Hart, at one time president of New Britain's Stanley Works, was the museum's first director. He acquired a number of works by his friend, Thomas Hart Benton, for the museum. Both Low and Benton were part of a high-spirited circle of friends (including James Cagney) who spent summers at Hart Haven, William Hart's summer place on Martha's Vineyard where both Low and Benton painted together (Hart was no relation to Thomas Hart Benton).
New Britain Museum of American Art | History
He also founded the Art Union of London and the Royal Botanic Society, as well as serving as vice-president of the Society of Arts and president of the Surrey Archaeological Society. Displaying his old masters collection to the public at his London house on Duchess Street, a mansion at 116 Piccadilly and at Deepdene House in Surrey. He was also a patron to idealists such as Young England and the Spanish Carlists and helped organise the 1851 Great Exhibition. From 1851 to 1858 he chaired the Eastern Steam Navigation Company for Isambard Kingdom Brunel, with Henry having been the "Great Eastern"'s chief fundraiser.
Henry Thomas Hope | Biography
The first suggestion of establishing local museums in Britain was made by William Sharp in the nineteenth century. On the strength of this suggestion he was admitted to the Royal Society.
Local museum | History
The Museum of London Antiquities was a collection established by Charles Roach Smith in Bishopsgate, London, England. In 1854, Roach Smith published a "Catalogue Of The Museum Of London Antiquities" to itemize the collection. In 1855, he sold the collection to the British Museum.
Museum of London Antiquities | Introduction
By the last years of the 19th century, The British Museum's collections had increased to the extent that its building was no longer large enough. 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. The first stage was the construction of the northern wing beginning 1906. All the while, the collections kept growing. Emil Torday collected in Central Africa, Aurel Stein in Central Asia, D.G. Hogarth, Leonard Woolley and T. E. Lawrence excavated at Carchemish. Around this time, the American collector and philanthropist J Pierpont Morgan donated a substantial number of objects to the museum, including William Greenwell's collection of prehistoric artefacts from across Europe which he had purchased for £10,000 in 1908.
British Museum | New century, new building (1900–1925)
The London Museum, established to illustrate the history of London, England. was inaugurated on 21 March 1912 by King George V with Queen Mary and Princess Mary and Prince George in temporary accommodation within the second-floor State Apartments at Kensington Palace. It opened to the public on 8 April, admitting more than 13,000 visitors during the day. Two years after opening, the collections were moved to Lancaster House in St James's, and the museum remained there until World War II. The first Keeper of the museum was Sir Guy Francis Laking, and from 1926 to 1944 the Keeper was the archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler.
London Museum | Introduction
London is home to over 240 museums, galleries, and other institutions, many of which are free of admission charges and are major tourist attractions as well as playing a research role. The first of these to be established was the British Museum in Bloomsbury, in 1753. Originally containing antiquities, natural history specimens and the national library, the museum now has 7 million artefacts from around the globe. Also of eighteenth-century foundation is the Royal Academy of Arts; its summer exhibition has been an annual fixture on the London social calendar since 1769. In 1824 the National Gallery was founded to house the British national collection of Western paintings; this now occupies a prominent position in Trafalgar Square.
Culture of London | Museums and art galleries
To charge would cut at the root of the development." Francis took radical steps to modernise and rationalise the organisation and responsibilities of the museum and other organisations for which it was nominally responsible. He was largely responsible for the contents of the British Museum Act of 1963, which gave the Natural History Museum complete independence from the British Museum for the first time, authorised the museum to dispose of duplicate items, and allowed it to store and even display items away from the main building at Bloomsbury. This permitted, for example, the transformation of the museum's department of ethnography into the free-standing Museum of Mankind.
Frank Francis | Director of the British Museum
During the 1830s and 1840s the British Museum had been extensively re-built to designs approved by trustees and built by the architect, Sir Robert Smirke. However, as work progressed it became evident that public interest in the museum's collections and library could not be adequately accommodated within the designs that had been approved. A Royal Commission was appointed in 1848 to look into the whole question, and various schemes to convert the open inner courtyard into exhibition space were submitted during 1849, including one by Hosking for a circular gallery modeled on the Pantheon in Rome. Hosking's entry received professional acclaim for the concept and quality of the design; his proposal becoming illustrated in "The Builder" magazine during the following year.
William Hosking | British Museum
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. 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. 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.
British Museum | Collecting from the wider world (1850–1875)
In 1763, the trustees of the British Museum, under the influence of Peter Collinson and William Watson, employed the former student of Carl Linnaeus, Daniel Solander, to reclassify the natural history collection according to the Linnaean system, thereby making the Museum a public centre of learning accessible to the full range of European natural historians. In 1823, King George IV gave the King's Library assembled by George III, and Parliament gave the right to a copy of every book published in the country, thereby ensuring that the museum's library would expand indefinitely. During the few years after its foundation the British Museum received several further gifts, including the Thomason Collection of Civil War Tracts and David Garrick's library of 1,000 printed plays.
British Museum | Cabinet of curiosities (1753–1778)
In 1970, this was the site of the Department of Ethnography of the British Museum, which housed its collections from the Americas, Africa, the Pacific and Australia, as well as tribal Asia and Europe, because of lack of space in the Museum's main building in Bloomsbury. Between 1970 and 1997, the building, as the Museum of Mankind, hosted around 75 exhibitions, including many famous ones such as "Nomad and City", 1976, and "Living Arctic", 1987. It was created by Keeper of Ethnography Adrian Digby in the 1960s, and opened by his successor William Fagg. Fagg was succeeded by Malcolm Mcleod in 1974, and by John Mack in 1990.
6 Burlington Gardens | Museum of Mankind
The Museum was founded by Brian McElney. Brian spent his entire working life practising law in Hong Kong and it was during this time that he was drawn to East Asian, and especially Chinese art. In 1958 he bought his first piece, an ivory goat and kid, after which Brian's collection grew to include jades, ceramics, scholar's studio objects and bronzes. After his retirement from law in 1983, Brian returned to England and procured the funds for the restoration and refurbishment of the Georgian building that houses the Museum, founding the Museum itself in 1990. Mr McElney donated his private collection to form the Museum, which he had created as a UK educational charity, opening to the public in 1993.
Museum of East Asian Art, Bath | History
The museum was founded by two antique collectors; Dallas Pratt (August 21, 1914 – May 20, 1994), an American psychiatrist from New York and heir to a substantial Standard Oil fortune; and John Judkyn (1913 – July 27, 1963), a British designer and antiques dealer. The museum was opened to the public for the first time on July 1, 1961, and remains the only museum devoted to American decorative arts outside the boundaries of the United States. The museum's mission today stays true to the ambitions of its founders; to increase knowledge of American cultural history in order to strengthen the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom.
American Museum and Gardens | Museum
When the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII) visited Cambridge MA in 1861, Henry Acland of the University of Oxford joined him. Bickmore was privileged to discuss his plans for a museum with Dr. Acland, whose encouragement strengthened his determination to found such a museum. Others had previously failed to generate the necessary funds to establish a museum.
Albert S. Bickmore | Education
388 Pages, contains Index and explanatory notes; 8 inches tall. Cover image:‘The design on the cover of this book represents one of the bronze lions, designed for the British Museum by Alfred Stevens, which originally surmounted a low railing in Great Russell Street, and were later placed inside the Museum.’ –Editor's Note on seventh leaf The contents of Esdaile's book are as follows (chapter name and written chapter focus; all copied verbatim from the text). The purpose of listing here is to provide metadata for future searches, as well as a brief overview for researchers. Sir Frederic G. Kenyon was the director and principal librarian of the British Museum Library in the early 20th century.
The British Museum Library: a Short History and Survey | Table of contents
The Association was founded in 1831 and modelled on the German Gesellschaft Deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte. It was founded during post-war reconstruction after the Peninsula war to improve the advancement of science in England. The prime mover (who is regarded as the main founder) was Reverend William Vernon Harcourt, following a suggestion by Sir David Brewster, who was disillusioned with the elitist and conservative attitude of the Royal Society. Charles Babbage, William Whewell and J. F. W. Johnston are also considered to be founding members. The first meeting was held in York (at the Yorkshire Museum) on Tuesday 27 September 1831 with various scientific papers being presented on the following days.
British Science Association | Foundation
Prominent Lexington, Kentucky composer and musician, George Littlejohn Bagby (1891 - 1961), donated an important group of paintings created by some of the leading portrait artists active in 18th century Great Britain. The noted British artists William Beechey, Henry Raeburn, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and George Romney were kept constantly busy with commissions from wealthy patrons across the British isles. Among the subjects featured in the collection of the museum are Miss Arabella Margaretta Phipps, Miss Catherine Angelo, Colonel Sir James Malcolm, and Col. William Congalton-Bethune.
Huntington Museum of Art | The George L. Bagby Collection of British Portraits
Before construction of the present complex, the museum was housed in the Arsenal building in Central Park. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., the father of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th U.S. president, was one of the founders along with John David Wolfe, William T. Blodgett, Robert L. Stuart, Andrew H. Green, Robert Colgate, Morris K. Jesup, Benjamin H. Field, D. Jackson Steward, Richard M. Blatchford, J. P. Morgan, Adrian Iselin, Moses H. Grinnell, Benjamin B. Sherman, A. G. Phelps Dodge, William A. Haines, Charles A. Dana, Joseph H. Choate, Henry G. Stebbins, Henry Parish, and Howard Potter. The founding of the museum realized the dream of naturalist Dr.
American Museum of Natural History | Founding
In 1833 John Constable wrote with heavy irony of having received a visit in his studio from "a much greater man than the King—the Duke of Bedford—Lord Westminster—Lord Egremont, or the President of the Royal Academy — "MR SEGUIER"." When in 1832 two pictures by Richard Parkes Bonington, who had been dead only four years, were included in an "Old Masters" exhibition, Constable (who was twenty-six years older than Bonington) wrote that Seguier was "carrying on a Humbugg". Other founding Governors included George Legge, 3rd Earl of Dartmouth as President, the Marquess of Stafford, Sir Francis Baring, 1st Baronet, William Holwell Carr, John Julius Angerstein, Sir Abraham Hume, 2nd Baronet, Sir Thomas Bernard, 3rd Baronet, and others.
British Institution | Founding
The huge collection of the conchologist Hugh Cuming was acquired by the museum, and Gray's own wife had carried the open trays across the courtyard in a gale: all the labels blew away. That collection is said never to have recovered.
Natural History Museum, London | Early history
The first true national library was founded in 1753 as part of the British Museum. This new institution 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. The museum's foundations lay in the will of the physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane, who gathered an enviable collection of curiosities over his lifetime which he bequeathed to the nation for £20,000. Sloane's collection included some 40,000 printed books and 7,000 manuscripts, as well as prints and drawings. The British Museum Act 1753 also incorporated the Cotton library and the Harleian library.
National library | National libraries
With Sir William Jenner and Edward Sieveking he founded Museum of Hygiene at University College, London in 1877, which was formally incorporated under license of the Board of Trade. It was moved in 1882 from University College to new premises in Margaret Street, Cavendish Square.
George Vivian Poore | Life
The Foundling Hospital was established by the philanthropist Thomas Coram in 1739. After 17 years of tireless campaigning, Coram was finally granted a Royal Charter by King George II, enabling him to set up the UK's first children's charity in Bloomsbury, London. By the early 1920s the Hospital was no longer removed from the pollution of the city; it had been subsumed into central London. The trustees of the Hospital decided to relocate operations to a modern purpose-built facility in Berkhamsted. In 1926, the land occupied by the former Hospital in Bloomsbury was sold off and the building torn down.
Foundling Museum | History
He is considered to be one of the founders of the museum along with John Huntington, Hinman Hurlbut, and Jeptha Wade II.
Horace Kelley | Introduction
The body of trustees decided on a converted 17th-century mansion, Montagu House, as a location for the museum, which it bought from the Montagu family for £20,000. The trustees rejected Buckingham House, on the site now occupied by Buckingham Palace, on the grounds of cost and the unsuitability of its location. With the acquisition of Montagu House, the first exhibition galleries and reading room for scholars opened on 15 January 1759. At this time, the largest parts of collection were the library, which took up the majority of the rooms on the ground floor of Montagu House, and the natural history objects, which took up an entire wing on the second state storey of the building.
British Museum | Cabinet of curiosities (1753–1778)
Bexhill Museum was founded by Marsden and the Reverend J. C. Thompson FGS. Marsden is credited as the person who inspired the museum's creation. She organised meetings to gather local support. She wrote to the local paper and invited local dignitaries and she successfully gathered artefacts from the collections held by industrialists at matchmakers Bryant and May and chocolate makers Fry's. The museum was given Marsden's shell collection. She encouraged Dr Walter Amsden to donate his collection of Egyptian artefacts. In February 1913 the local council were being petitioned for funds crediting Marsden as the museum's chief supporter, and including the text of her talk to the council.
Kate Marsden | Continued controversy
Its founder chair is Tony Hall, Baron Hall of Birkenhead (2004–2009). The founder Chief Executive is Tom Bewick (2004–2010). The current chair is Paul Latham of Live Nation. The current Chief Executive is Pauline Tambling. The Trustees are Kim Bromley-Derry, Roisin McDonagh from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Oliver Morris, UK Music, Martin Penny, David Anderson, National Museum Wales, Alex Porter-Smith, Carol Harvey-Barnes, Clare Hawkins and Vilma Nikolaidou. Creative & Cultural Skills' registered office is The Backstage Centre, High House Purfleet, Essex which it built and opened in 2013. Its staff are based across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Creative &amp; Cultural Skills | Structure
The New Britain Museum of American Art is an art museum in New Britain, Connecticut. Founded in 1903, it is the first museum in the country dedicated to American art. A total of 72,000 visits were made to the museum in the year ending June 30, 2009, and another 16,000 visits were made to the museum's satellite gallery at TheatreWorks in Hartford, Connecticut. Walnut Hill Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, is next to the museum.
New Britain Museum of American Art | Introduction
The British Optical Association Museum was founded in London, England, by John H. Sutcliffe OBE in January 1901 as a collection of historic spectacles and visual aids designed to illustrate the development of corrective eyewear. It subsequently expanded its collecting activities to encompass ophthalmic instrumentation and the depiction of optometric subject matter in works of art such as paintings, prints and sculpture. With over 27,000 catalogued objects (including archives) it may be judged one of the most comprehensive and high quality collections of its type. It is believed to be the oldest such museum to be open to the public.
British Optical Association | British Optical Association Museum
Albert Smith Bickmore (March 1, 1839 – August 12, 1914) was an American naturalist and originator of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, becoming one of its founders.
Albert S. Bickmore | Introduction
The museum became a construction site as Sir Robert Smirke's grand neo-classical building gradually arose. 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. Although it was not fully open to the general public until 1857, special openings were arranged during The Great Exhibition of 1851. In 1840, the museum became involved in its first overseas excavations, Charles Fellows's expedition to Xanthos, in Asia Minor, whence came remains of the tombs of the rulers of ancient Lycia, among them the Nereid and Payava monuments.
British Museum | The largest building site in Europe (1825–1850)
Its expansion over the following 250 years was largely a result of expanding British colonisation and has resulted in the creation of several branch institutions, the first being the Natural History Museum in 1881. 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 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.
British Museum | Introduction
Grosvenor Museum was founded in 1885, largely due to the inspiration and work of the Chester Society for Natural Science, Literature and Art. This society had been founded in 1871 by Charles Kingsley, who was at that time a canon of Chester Cathedral. In 1873 it joined forces with the Chester Archaeological Society and the Schools of Science and Art to raise money to build the museum. A sum of £11,000 (£ in 2020) was raised, which included a donation of £4,000 (£ in 2020) from the First Duke of Westminster. The Duke also gave a plot of land in Grosvenor Street.
Grosvenor Museum | Early history
In 1955, Patrick Saul founded the "British Institute of Recorded Sound", after realising that material was in danger of being lost as the British Museum did not maintain a comprehensive archive. The Institute was located in a property owned by the British Museum in Russell Square (with rent and rates guaranteed by Robert Mayer), and supported by a donation from the Quaker trust in Birmingham. A public appeal resulted in the donation of thousands of shellac discs, which started off the collection. The British Institute of Recorded Sound became part of the British Library, which had been split off from the British Museum, in April 1983.
British Library Sound Archive | History
By his will, Christy bequeathed his collections of modern objects to the nation; his archaeological collection went to the nation, but with the finds from excavations in France to be shared with the French Musée d'Archéologie Nationale, which was to get the most important pieces. He also left £5000 which established the Christy fund that allowed the British Museum to purchase many more artefacts; with a sum of money to be applied to public exhibition. As there was then no spare room at the British Museum, the trustees secured the suite of rooms at 103 Victoria Street, London SW (in which Christy himself had lived) and here the collection was exhibited, under the care of A.
Henry Christy | Collections and legacy
In 1806, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1799 to 1803 removed the large collection of marble sculptures from the Parthenon, on the Acropolis in Athens and transferred them to the UK. In 1816 these masterpieces of western art were acquired by The British Museum by Act of Parliament and deposited in the museum thereafter. The collections were supplemented by the Bassae frieze from Phigaleia, Greece in 1815. The Ancient Near Eastern collection also had its beginnings in 1825 with the purchase of Assyrian and Babylonian antiquities from the widow of Claudius James Rich.
British Museum | Growth and change (1800–1825)
Even the Victoria and Albert Museum of London have one in their collection.
Thomas Dam | Introduction
As partners, Burnet and Campbell never succeeded in English architectural competitions and it was only after Campbell's departure that Burnet extended the practice south of the Border. In 1903–1904 the Office of Works selected Burnet to design the Edward VII Galleries at the British Museum in London. In 1905 Burnet opened a London office in the name of John J Burnet at 1 Montague Place (a grace-and-favour house rented to him by the Museum), taking the young Tait with him. His original ambitious plans would have extended the Museum on all four sides, demolishing Bloomsbury properties to make way for a Parisian-style British Museum Avenue on a north axis, but only the Edward VII Galleries were actually built due to lack of funds.
John James Burnet | British Museum
John Julius Angerstein (1735 – 22 January 1823) was a London businessman and Lloyd's underwriter, a patron of the fine arts and a collector. It was the prospect that his collection of paintings was about to be sold by his estate in 1824 that galvanised the founding of the British National Gallery.
John Julius Angerstein | Introduction
Morgan had also acquired a major part of Sir John Evans's coin collection, which was later sold to the museum by his son John Pierpont Morgan Junior in 1915. In 1918, because of the threat of wartime bombing, some objects were evacuated via the London Post Office Railway to Holborn, the National Library of Wales (Aberystwyth) and a country house near Malvern. On the return of antiquities from wartime storage in 1919 some objects were found to have deteriorated. A conservation laboratory was set up in May 1920 and became a permanent department in 1931. It is today the oldest in continuous existence.
British Museum | New century, new building (1900–1925)
A bequest from Miss Emma Turner in 1892 financed excavations in Cyprus. In 1897 the death of the great collector and curator, A. W. Franks, was followed by an immense bequest of 3,300 finger rings, 153 drinking vessels, 512 pieces of continental porcelain, 1,500 netsuke, 850 inro, over 30,000 bookplates and miscellaneous items of jewellery and plate, among them the Oxus Treasure. In 1898 Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild bequeathed the Waddesdon Bequest, the glittering contents from his New Smoking Room at Waddesdon Manor. This consisted of almost 300 pieces of "objets d'art et de vertu" which included exquisite examples of jewellery, plate, enamel, carvings, glass and maiolica, among them the Holy Thorn Reliquary, probably created in the 1390s in Paris for John, Duke of Berry.
British Museum | Scholarship and legacies (1875–1900)
Montagu House (sometimes spelled "Montague") was a late 17th-century mansion in Great Russell Street in the Bloomsbury district of London, which became the first home of the British Museum. The first house on the site was destroyed by fire in 1686. The rebuilt house was sold to the British Museum in 1759, and demolished in the 1840s to make way for the present larger building.
Montagu House, Bloomsbury | Introduction
The latter part of his career was largely devoted to work on the public level of museums, producing gazetteers such as the classic "Cambridge Guide to Museums of Britain and Ireland" (1987) on which he collaborated with Ann Nicholls. Together with John Letts he founded the European Museum of the Year Award in 1977, later to become the European Museum Forum, aimed at stimulating the international interchange of ideas and creating networks of inspiration.
Kenneth Hudson | Later career
There are many other research libraries, including the Wellcome Library and Dana Centre, as well as university libraries, including the British Library of Political and Economic Science at LSE, the Central Library at Imperial, the Maughan Library at King's, and the Senate House Libraries at the University of London. In the latter half of the 19th century the locale of South Kensington was developed as "Albertopolis", a cultural and scientific quarter. Three major national museums are there: the Victoria and Albert Museum (for the applied arts), the Natural History Museum, and the Science Museum. The National Portrait Gallery was founded in 1856 to house depictions of figures from British history; its holdings now comprise the world's most extensive collection of portraits.
London | Museums, art galleries and libraries
The British Institution (in full, the British Institution for Promoting the Fine Arts in the United Kingdom; founded 1805, disbanded 1867) was a private 19th-century society in London formed to exhibit the works of living and dead artists; it was also known as the Pall Mall Picture Galleries or the British Gallery. Unlike the Royal Academy it admitted only connoisseurs, dominated by the nobility, rather than practicing artists to its membership, which along with its conservative taste led to tensions with the British artists it was intended to encourage and support. In its gallery in Pall Mall the Institution held the world's first regular temporary exhibitions of Old Master paintings, which alternated with sale exhibitions of the work of living artists; both quickly established themselves as popular parts of the London social and artistic calendar.
British Institution | Introduction
Aged 21, he moved to London. He was an avid collector of natural history specimens purchased mainly at auctions of specimens from voyages of exploration. He was a fellow of the Linnean Society and the Wernerian Society which gave him access to the best collections and libraries in London. It was quite common for private collectors to open small public museums, and in 1807 he founded the London Museum and Institute of Natural History. According to the catalogues and contemporary reviews, this exhibited several hundred cases of world birds, mammals, reptiles, fish, molluscs, insects, corals and other invertebrates and botanical specimens and other exotica alongside his British collections.
Edward Donovan | Biography
The site for the museum was donated by Richard Sommers Gard, MP for Exeter from 1857 to 1864, and a competition for its design attracted twenty-four entries, including one from John Hayward, whose gothic design was the winner. His original plan called for a tall central tower like that at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, but that feature was rejected and was replaced by a gable and rose window. Initially proposed by Sir Stafford Northcote as a practical memorial to Prince Albert, an appeal fund was launched in 1861. John Gendall volunteered to curate an initial collection required to fill the planned building.
Royal Albert Memorial Museum | Establishment and early period
The collection was in the tradition of a "Schatzkammer" such as those formed by the Renaissance princes of Europe. Baron Ferdinand's will was most specific, and failure to observe the terms would make it void, the collection should be
British Museum | Scholarship and legacies (1875–1900)
As well as Stanhope and Macaulay, the founder Trustees included Benjamin Disraeli and Lord Ellesmere. It was the latter who donated the Chandos portrait to the nation as the gallery's first portrait. Carlyle became a trustee after the death of Ellesmere in 1857. For the first 40 years, the gallery was housed in various locations in London. The first 13 years were spent at 29 Great George Street, Westminster. There, the collection increased in size from 57 to 208 items, and the number of visitors from 5,300 to 34,500. In 1869, the collection moved to Exhibition Road and buildings managed by the Royal Horticultural Society.
National Portrait Gallery, London | History and buildings
The British Empire and Commonwealth Museum () was a museum in Bristol, United Kingdom exploring the history of the British Empire and the effect of British colonial rule on the rest of the world. The museum opened in 2002 and entered voluntary liquidation in 2013.
British Empire and Commonwealth Museum | Introduction
This Greek Revival style building sits at the heart of British academia in London's Bloomsbury. With its four vast wings, 43 Greek temples inspired columns, triangular pediment, and enormous steps, it's certainly not what you'd expect to see in central London. Its grandeur was designed to reflect all the 'wondrous objects housed inside' by the architect Sir Robert Smirke in 1823. It emulated classical Greek architecture – a style that had become increasingly popular since the 1750s when western Europeans 'rediscovered' ancient Greece.
British Museum Reading Room | Architecture
The predominance of natural history, books and manuscripts began to lessen when in 1772 the museum acquired for £8,410 its first significant antiquities in Sir William Hamilton's "first" collection of Greek vases.
British Museum | Cabinet of curiosities (1753–1778)
He was a co-founder of the Royal Architectural Museum in 1851.
George Godwin | Life
The main block and facade of the British Museum, Bloomsbury (1823–46). This is Smirke's largest and best known building. In 1820, in his role as architect to the Office of Works, Smirke was invited to redesign the museum, although the complete design dates from 1823, and was for a building surrounding a large central courtyard with a grand south front, given the limited funds the work was divided into phases. It is built of brick with the visible facades cased in Portland stone. The first part to be constructed was the "King's Library" of 1823–1828, which forms the east wing.
Robert Smirke (architect) | British Museum
In 1831, Dr John Forbes decided to form a Philosophical and Literary Society in Chichester and, as one of the objectives of this society, Chichester Museum was founded as a Natural History collection. The museum was initially located in the Royal West Sussex Hospital, and the collection was formed from donations from the general public. The Museum was later relocated to 45 South Street after plans for a move to 7 North Pallant where abandoned due to financial difficulty. In 1851 interest in the museum was motivated by the Great Exhibition in London, and the decision of the Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland to hold their annual conference in Chichester.
The Novium | History of Chichester District Museum
From 1807 prizes were given to artists and surplus funds were used to buy paintings for the nation.
British Institution | Introduction
By 1893 the first director was appointed to oversee these developing science collections, which would become the core of the Science Museum upon its founding as a separate entity in 1909. In the meantime, the decision was made to relocate the natural history specimen collections of the British Museum to a separate and dedicated facility, the Natural History Museum, the building of which lasted between 1873 and 1884. Other enterprises were granted parcels of land on the active patronage of the Commission, which aimed to fulfill Prince Albert's vision. By the end of the century the museums were complemented by the Royal Albert Hall (opened in 1871), the Royal College of Music (opened 1894), and the Imperial Institute (opened 1893).
19th-century London | Museums
Founder, Christian Levett, a philanthropist in the field, sponsored multiple exhibitions at The British Museum, Royal Academy, National Gallery, Sir John Soane’s Museum and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. He has funded archaeological works in the UK, Spain, Italy and Egypt and sponsored academic scholarships at Wolfson College and The Ruskin School of Art in Oxford. He has aided curatorial funding at The Ashmolean, The British Museum, and The British School at Rome. As well as this, he has funded renovation works at The Charterhouse Museum London, Charterhouse School Surrey, The National Gallery and the chapel Notre Dame de Vie in Mougins, and has sponsored conferences at King’s College London, Senate House UCL and at The Mougins Museum.
Mougins Museum of Classical Art | History
It currently defines itself as follows:
UK Museum of Ordure | Introduction
The British Museum Friends (BMF) is a registered charitable organisation in the UK with close links to the British Museum, and was set up in 1968. It provides funding in the form of grants to the British Museum in order to support the educational objectives of the Museum including to allow the Museum to acquire new items and collections, and assists with financing research programmes, conservation, and new technologies throughout the Museum.
The British Museum Friends | Introduction
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. 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. This was a time of innovation as electric lighting was introduced in the Reading Room and exhibition galleries. The William Burges collection of armoury was bequeathed to the museum in 1881. 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.
British Museum | Scholarship and legacies (1875–1900)
Clarence Bicknell (27 August 1842 – 17 July 1918) was a British vicar, amateur archaeologist, botanist, artist, Esperantist, author and philanthropist. He founded the Bicknell Museum in Bordighera, Italy. Also named after him is a street in Bordighera, and two plant species.
Clarence Bicknell | Introduction
The Old Masters exhibitions were mainly loans from the members. The first was in 1813, entirely consisting of 143 works by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and the next year 53 William Hogarths, 73 Gainsboroughs, 85 Richard Wilsons and 12 by Zoffany were shown. In 1815 for the first time the Institution showed foreign art – Dutch and Flemish – and upset many British artists by a preface to the catalogue, implying in a rather too patronizing manner that British artists had a lot to learn from them. Robert Smirke is generally accepted as the anonymous author of a series of satirical ""Catalogues Raisonnés"" published in 1815–16, which savagely lampooned the Directors, the great and the good of British art patronage.
British Institution | Heyday of the Institution
Before his death, he presented a complete set of his works to the British Museum.
Charles William Sherborn | Introduction
The first true national library was founded in 1753 as part of the British Museum. This new institution 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. The museum's foundations lay in the will of the physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane, who gathered an enviable collection of curiosities over his lifetime which he bequeathed to the nation for £20,000. Sloane's collection included some 40,000 printed books and 7,000 manuscripts, as well as prints and drawings. The British Museum Act 1753 also incorporated the Cotton library and the Harleian library.
History of libraries | National libraries
The Institute was set up in late 1917, towards the end of the First World War, by a group of Anglo-Italian scholars, intellectuals and public figures who were keen to counter anti-British propaganda. Discussions had taken place shortly before the outbreak of war as to the possibility of founding an institute similar to the Institut Français de Florence (established in 1907). Among those involved in the early days of the British Institute were Walter Ashburner, Guido Biagi, Guido Ferrando, Edward Hutton, Carlo Placci, Angelo Orvieto, Gaetano Salvemini, Aldo Sorani, G.M. Trevelyan and his wife Janet Trevelyan, daughter of Mrs Humphry Ward, Herbert Trench and Lina Waterfield (née Duff Gordon), niece of Janet Ross, who first set up a library in 1916.
British Institute of Florence | History
In 1839–40 Beaumont founded the Beaumont Philosophical Institution, in Beaumont Square in Mile End, E1, in London's Borough of Tower Hamlets. The Square was part of the Beaumont Estate, a housing development, and the Institution was on the north-west corner of the square. It was created for the welfare and entertainment of people in the neighbourhood. The opening was on 29 October 1840, with a temperance meeting led by Philip Henry Stanhope, 4th Earl Stanhope. The Institution comprised a museum, reading-room, and chapel. When Beaumont died in 1841 he left £13,000 for the maintenance of the institute. In 1844 the museum offered geology, mineralogy, and conchology, and there were singing classes and concerts.
John Thomas Barber Beaumont | Legacy
During the founders' lifetimes the collection contributed illustrations to more than four hundred books, and has remained one of the most important resources for authors writing about history of the British theatre.
Mander and Mitchenson | Introduction
Originating from collections within the British Museum, the landmark Alfred Waterhouse building was built and opened by 1881 and later incorporated the Geological Museum. The Darwin Centre is a more recent addition, partly designed as a modern facility for storing the valuable collections.
Natural History Museum, London | Introduction
Thomas Sheppard (2 October 1876 – 18 February 1945) was a British museum curator and amateur geologist, who founded several museums in Kingston upon Hull and in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England.
Thomas Sheppard (curator) | Introduction