Opening on 24 May 1683 the Ashmolean Museum was based around the private collection of the antiquarian Elias Ashmole (1617-1692), who donated it after his death to the University of Oxford. At the core of Ashmole’s gift to Oxford was a collection originally assembled by antiquarians John Trades-cant the elder (died 1638) and his son John (1608-1662). The first curator of the museum was Robert Plot, an antiquary of distinction. Unusually, from its beginning the Ashmolean Museum was open to the public and had clear research and teaching, as well as display, functions. The fortunes of the museum waxed and waned over the next one hundred and fifty years, and the natural history side of the collections eventually assumed greater importance than the human antiquities.
However, from the mid-nineteenth century onward the character of the museum changed to the form we know today, featuring significant collections of antiquities derived from archaeological excavation and collection. Many famous collections have been presented to the Ashmolean Musuem, an example being Sir Richard Colt Hoare’s donation of the Douglas collection of Anglo-Saxon antiquities in 1827. The museum has also benefited from the activities of its keepers, the most famous of whom was Sir Arthur Evans. Under Evans’s keepership the Ashmolean once again rationalized its exhibits, expanded, and moved into new premises in Beaumont Street. These changes have ensured that the Ashmolean Museum remains one of the most significant archaeological museums in the world, and the research of its staff allows it to remain at the cutting edge of world archaeology.
See also Publication of The Ancient History of North and South Wiltshire (1812); Discovery of Minoan Civilization (1900-1935).
Further Reading
MacGregor, A. 1983. Ark to Ashmolean: the story of the Tradescants, Ashmole and the Ashmolean Museum. Oxford: Ashmolean Museum.
Ovenell, R. F. 1986. The Ashmolean Museum 1683-1894. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
World History
