The Ashmolean’s collections are extraordinary. They reflect four centuries of evolving knowledge about many of the world’s great civilisations. Some collections, such as the Chinese greenware and artefacts from pre-Dynastic Egypt, are the finest to be found outside their countries of origin.

The objects we display from Arthur Evans’s excavations on Crete defined the accepted view of Minoan civilisation for 100 years.

Other collections of Renaissance art, textiles and Greek and Anglo-Saxon coins reflect the passion and dedication of the collectors who created them.

These treasures, brought together in a ‘collection of collections’, deserve a museum that makes them accessible to the widest possible audience in an engaging and instructive manner. It is this vision that is at the heart of the new Ashmolean.

The new building, designed by the celebrated architect Rick Mather, is the museum’s most significant architectural development since the construction of Charles Cockerell’s great neoclassical building on Beaumont Street in 1845.

It provides visitors with a seamless transition from the old building to five floors of galleries linked by bridges with clear vistas. This is a single, integrated museum where the relationships between galleries are often as important as the galleries themselves.

Under the theme Crossing Cultures, Crossing Time, the new Ashmolean focuses on the influences and links between cultures, rather than the differences.

It is a significant departure from the rigid geographical and chronological divisions of older museum presentation, and has opened up the opportunity to look in new ways at our collections and how we display them.

This is appropriate for a museum that is a key part of a university where research is constantly producing new ideas and new questions.

In many respects this approach represents a return to the original intentions of the creators of the Ashmolean.

When the museum’s founding collection was shown by the Tradescant family in their house in Lambeth in the early 17th century, visitors noted that viewing the collection was like going around the world in a day.

Similarly, Arthur Evans’s vision, in a publication of 1891, was to ensure that students of classics and history at the University of Oxford had a real understanding of art and archaeology and that it was the job of the museum, as part of the university, to provide that understanding.

In both respects, the new Ashmolean responds to those historic intentions. We now have the resources to make the museum a place of learning and inspiration for every visitor.

Creating the new Ashmolean has taken the effort of hundreds of people and organisations over the course of a decade. It has received major support from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Linbury Trust, numerous trusts, foundations and private individuals, to whom we are extremely grateful.

As Britain’s first public museum opens its new set of front doors, we welcome you to join us in one of the most important moments in the history of the Ashmolean.

We look forward to seeing you this month and well into the future.

Christopher Brown
Director, 2009