Ashmolean Museum

The Ashmolean Museum (in full the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology) on Beaumont Street, Oxford, is the world's first university museum.

Ashmolean Museum

Established	1683 (1683)
Location	Beaumont Street, Oxford, England
Type	University Museum of Art and Archaeology
Director	Alexander Sturgis
Website	www.ashmolean.org

Its first building was built in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave to the University of Oxford in 1677. The museum reopened in 2009 after a major redevelopment. In November 2011 new galleries focusing on Egypt and Nubia were also unveiled.

Ashmole's collection was based on the objects he got from the travellers and collectors John Tradescant the elder and his son of the same name. The museum opened on 24 May 1683, with naturalist Robert Plot as the first keeper.

The present building dates from the 1840s, and the original building in Broad Street is now the Oxford Museum of the History of Science. That building is the world's first purpose-built museum.

The interior of the Ashmolean has been extensively modernised in recent years. Between 2006 and 2009, the museum was expanded. The $98.2 million rebuilding resulted in five floors instead of three, with a doubling of the display space. It has new conservation studios and an education centre.

Museum gallery

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  'The Brighton Pierrots', painted 1915 by Walter Sickert
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  The Alfred Jewel
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  'Music' by Edward Burne-Jones
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  The "Two Dog Palette" from Hierakonpolis
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  'Restaurant de la Sirène, Asnières', by Vincent van Gogh
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  The Messiah Stradivarius violin
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  'Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus', by Edouard Manet
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  The Narmer Macehead
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  'The Hunt in the Forest' by Paolo Uccello
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  Statue of Sobek, the crocodile god, from the pyramid temple of Amenemhat III
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  'Acme and Septimius', by Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton
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  The 'Apotheosis of Germanicus', a copy after an antique Cameo painted in 1626 by Peter Paul Rubens
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  The Return of the Dove to the Ark, by Sir John Everett Millais
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  A Greek tragic mask dating to the 1st century BC or 1st century AD. See Theatre of ancient Greece.
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  'A lady singing', gouache painting with gold on paper 1740-45, Rajasthan, artist unknown
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  'Jeanne Holding a Fan', an oil on canvas painting by Camille Pissarro, c.1874
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  'The Holy Family with St John the Baptist', brush and brown wash on panel by Michelangelo
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  Tombstone, the doctor Claudius Agathemerus and his wife Myrtale, from Rome, about AD 100
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  'Studies of the Heads of two Apostles and of their Hands', by Raphael
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  A death mask of Oliver Cromwell
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  Portrait of John Ruskin by John Everett Millais
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  The ceremonial cloak of Chief Powhatan
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  The Abingdon Sword
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  'The Annunciation', attributed to Paolo Uccello
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  The Kish tablet: plaster caste
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  'Young Englishwoman', a costume study by Hans Holbein the Younger
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  A self-portrait by Samuel Palmer
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  Papyrus 115 (${\mathfrak {P}}$¹¹⁵): a fragmented manuscript of the New Testament