THE Ashmolean, the world’s first public museum, has created a new permanent gallery looking back at its origins.
The Ashmolean Story opened yesterday, marking the 400th anniversary of the birth of the museum’s founder, Elias Ashmole.
He gave his collection to Oxford University in 1677 and founded the Ashmolean in Broad Street in 1683.
On display at the Beaumont Street attraction, where the museum relocated in the 1840s, are many of the original artefacts and curiosities.
The new gallery has been made possible by a donation from Fellow of the Ashmolean Stephen Stow, a major grant from the Linbury Trust and a £110,000 grant from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and Wolfson Foundation.
Museum director Dr Xa Sturgis said: "Thanks to the generosity of members of the public, institutional support and private donors, we have been able to mark Elias Ashmole’s 400th birthday with this new gallery.
"It is a celebration of Ashmole’s vision and of the role the Ashmolean has played in the development of museums and galleries in this country and across the world."
Elias Ashmole was a leading intellectual of his day who studied at Oxford and was elected a founding
A fellow of the Royal Society in London in 1661, he was interested in everything from natural history, medicine and mathematics, to alchemy, astrology and magic.
Ashmole’s gift to the university included his own extensive collection of books, manuscripts, coins, medals and other antiquities.
It also included the celebrated Tradescant family collection of rarities that had been gifted to Ashmole by John Tradescant the younger.
In 1683 Ashmole transferred everything to Oxford from London, sending it by barge in 26
large chests.
He specified that the new museum should be housed in a building designed to promote scientific
practice.
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