British Museum
The British Museum is one of the world's largest and most important museums of ancient history. 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 January 15, 1759 in Montagu House in Bloomsbury, on the site of the current museum building.
The museum is home to six million objects covering the story of human culture from its beginning to the present. Many of the artifacts are stored underneath the museum due to lack of space. The present chairman is Sir John Boyd and its director is Neil MacGregor.
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History
Though principally a museum of 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 antiquitities from Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Middle and Far East and the Americas. The Foundation Act, passed on June 7 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 headed 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 infamous 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 19,000 pamphlets, maps, charts and topographical trawings 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 reguest by a circular Reading Room of cast iron.
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 building and admission fee
The Queen Elizabeth II Great Court is a covered square at the centre of the British Museum designed by the architects Foster and Partners. 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 pairs of uniquely shaped glass panes. At the centre of the Great Court is the Reading Room vacated by the British Library. The Reading Room is open to any member of the public who wishes to read there.
The British Museum has charged an admission fee only during a period of a few months in 1972; however, some temporary special exhibitions, within but separate from the main museum, do charge. During 2002 the museum suffered serious financial difficulties and 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.
The British Museum Reading Room used to be part of the British Library. Its functions have now been moved to the new British Library building.
Highlights of the collections
The British Museum is principally a museum of antiquities. This distinguishes it from the likes of The Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg which are "universal" museums of art and culture. In London the main collections of Western fine art and global applied art are housed in the independent National Gallery and Victoria and Albert Museums respectively. However, many exhibits of the British Museum's exhibits are of great artistic merit as well as historical importance. 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: 1 volume of sketches and 4 volumes of manuscripts
- Egyptian Mummies
- The Benin Bronzes
- Artifacts from the Sutton Hoo burial
- The echo in the reading room, which Gerard Hoffnung recommended
Information
Admission to the British Museum is free, except for special exhibitions within the main museum.
At present, the ethnography section of the museum is closed, as it is in transit from another site to the main Museum.
Museum opening hours
- Saturday–Wednesday: 10:00–17:30
- Thursday & Friday: 10:00–20:30
Great Court opening hours
- Monday: 09:00–18:00
- Tuesday & Wednesday: 09:00–21:00
- Thursday–Saturday: 09:00–23:00
- Sunday: 09:00–21:00
Location
- Great Russell Street
- London WC1B 3DG
Nearest London Underground stations:
- Tottenham Court Road (Central, Northern lines)
- Holborn (Central, Piccadilly lines)
- Russell Square (Piccadilly line)
The British Museum, and especially the Reading Room, is a recurring setting in David Lodge's 1965 novel The British Museum Is Falling Down.