A Private View of the Ashmolean in Oxford by Dr Christopher Brown, The Director

The Ashmolean Museum

First of all I would like to point out that I have never stopped to consider the design and way in which we walk through and are given the artefacts to see in a museum. I was also hard pushed to begin telling you what the museum was all about – I had never been but I knew it held some amazing drawings and old masters.

To my delight I found that it held much much more and I can’t begin to say how impressed I was with it. It is also the Oldest Museum in the world –and started as a private collection in a house in Lambeth, known as the Ark – in the 1650’s. The Ashmolean Museum was opened for the first time to the public in 1683 and caused a rumpus of dialogue as the aristocracy couldn’t understand ‘why’ the lower classes and public wanted to see such curiosities and rarities.

The books recording visiting numbers which date back to the 18th Century show a marked difference to the number of people visiting on Wednesdays and Thursdays – which was purely to do with the fact that it was market day in Oxford and that’s when they came in to sell their produce.

The present building in Oxford built in 1845 is a magical Neo Classical facade but lacked a great deal of space and conservation, so the new build behind this facade was started in 2006 and opened by Her Majesty the Queen in Dec 2009 .

After entering the main doorway, you are welcomed into the new space by a 10ft statue that joins the old and the new and opens the atrium of the museum before you.

We were shown the exceptional conservation rooms, which didn’t exist before as most pieces were sent away for conservation – and which now is providing important information on the artefacts they have. Its rather like CSI – looking at this saxon arrow head, the microscope shows the cloth binding that has now become fossilized by the copper – do you remove it to clean the head? – what colour was the fabric, how was it woven and what pattern does it show?

The drawings that we were shown were equally if not even more fascinating – Michelangelo, the sketches for the half carved Prisoners – in Florence .

And the famous studies of the heads of the Two Apostles and their hands by Raphael

I also came across an artist that I know little about, called Matthias Grunwald {1475-1528 } and this charcoal drawing is exceptionally rare as all his works are mainly in oil.

This drawing also interestingly has within the paper the mark where the paper was hung out to dry on a line – it runs from left to right across her hands .

Turner’s Venice and pencil sketches – no glass to block the view and the almost tangible feeling that they have only just stepped outside the door and left their drawings on the table …

If you get a chance – it is so worth a visit to this exceptional museum. I will leave you with some shots of the original staircase – which is definately worth a walk up – beautiful grandeur.

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