The British Museum In London Welcomes Our Editor ~ Unrivaled And Surprising Collections Of Artworks From Around The World

Written by Monte Gravesend Monday, 14 November 2011 22:00

First founded in 1753, the British Museum now houses more than an incredible 7 million objects from all human history, of which approximately 50,000 items are displayed in 75,000 m² of exhibition space, making it one of the largest and most important human history museums in the world. There are nearly one hundred galleries open to the public, representing 2 miles (3.2 km) of exhibition space. From 5,000 visitors in its first year, the museum is now visited by nearly 6 million people annually. Originally founded following the government’s purchase of Sir Hans Sloane’s huge private collection of curios, the museum has continued to expand throughout its history. The first exhibition galleries and reading rooms opened in Montagu House, Bloomsbury, London, in 1759. Later donations from Captain Cook and Greek and Roman artifacts from Sir William Hamilton saw the museum rapidly expand during the 18^th century. During the 19th century, the British Museum became one of the most powerful in the world. Bolstered by objects such as the Rosetta Stone, the Elgin Marbles and Babylonian artifacts, the museum soon outgrew its surroundings, and thus a new, neo-classical building was designed by Sir Robert Smirke, which was completed in 1831. The building was constructed using up-to-the-minute 1820s technology. Built on a concrete floor, the frame of the building was made from cast iron and filled in with London stock brick. The external architecture of the Museum was designed to reflect the purpose of the building. The monumental South entrance, with its stairs, colonnade and pediment, was intended to reflect the wondrous objects housed inside. As the museum continued to grow, it actively pursued and acquired new exhibits, sending archaeologists abroad to find treasures of the ancient world. Excavations in Lykia, Assyria and Mesopotamia threw up incredible finds, not least Charles Newton's discovery of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World. Later on John Turtle Wood discovered the Temple of Artemis. More expansion followed to cope with influx of artifacts, including Sydney Smirke's Round Reading Room. A White Wing was added in 1914, and in 1939, a new gallery for the Parthenon sculptures was created by the American architect, John Russell Pope (but was damaged by bombing during World War II shortly afterwards). Following the war, the damaged museum was restored and in 2000 it gained its newest extension, the Queen Elizabeth II Great Court, designed by Pritzker and Stirling Prize winning architect, Lord Norman Foster. The Museum is now looking forward to its next major building project, the £100 million World Conservation and Exhibition Centre which will concentrate all the Museum's conservation facilities (one of the oldest and largest conservation facilities in the world) into one center and provide new space for temporary exhibitions. This project, designed by Rogers, Stirk, Harbour and Partners (including the Pritzker Laureate, Sir Richard Rogers) is expected to be completed by 2013. Originally, the British Museum also housed the natural history artifacts, until these gained their own, dedicated museum in Kensington in 1881. Until 1973, when it too became a separate institution, the British Museum was also home to the British Library, which can number Karl Marx, Lenin, Bram Stoker and Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle among the famous 19th century figures who took advantage of its impressive (and free) facilities. The famous former “reading room” is now the museum’s centerpiece and hosts major exhibitions. Visit the museum’s thorough website at: http://www.britishmuseum.org/

The Etruscans were the original inhabitants of much of Italy – before the Romans. They had a culture which was much more friendly to women (Rome was notoriously misogynistic), which produced brilliant art, which welcomed immigrants from Greece and Phoenicia, and which was highly literate (though we have only a few words of their language).The Romans destroyed the Etruscans. They stole bits of Etruscan culture but they destroyed Etruscan society. Etruscan artworks have their own room – Room 71. And here you can see some really lovely work from their civilisation – which lasted five hundred years and which, many Etruscans seem to have believed, would have a finite lifecycle just like a man, a tree, or a horse. Etruscans were fine metalworkers in both bronze and precious metals. Even the bronze helmet, which must have been primarily functional, has an incredibly crisp design and execution. More startling is the gold jewellery, which uses techniques like filigree and granulation to create shimmering surfaces – incredibly detailed work considering these metalworkers had no magnifying glasses to make their work easier.There are amazing bronze mirrors, too, with scenes from mythology incised on the back. Quite often, the Etruscans take Greek mythology as their subject – they had no qualms about borrowing stories from other pantheons and other peoples. Looking at the sheer number and beauty of these mirrors you just know that the Etruscans were a people who took their appearance very seriously.Incredibly, you can even see a piece of Etruscan painting, 2,500 years old. There are so many other things to see in the British Museum. Romans, Greeks, Ancient Egypt; Lindow Man and medieval clocks, Japanese prints and Assyrian gates. But don’t miss the Etruscans. They’re worth knowing – as is Seianti Hanunia Tlesnasa, a beautiful and interesting ancient woman from a little known ancient culture.

The original 1753 collection has now grown to over thirteen million objects. The Department of Prints and Drawings holds the national collection of Western Prints and Drawings. It ranks as one of the largest and best print room collections in existence alongside the Albertina in Vienna, the Paris collections and the Hermitage. The holdings are easily accessible to the general public in the Study Room, and the department also has its own exhibition gallery, where the displays and exhibitions change several times a year. There are approximately 50,000 drawings and over two million prints covering the period from the 14th century to the present, including many works of the highest quality by the leading artists of the European schools. There are magnificent groups of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, (including his only surviving full-scale cartoon), Dürer (the collection of 138 drawings is one of the finest in existence), Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt, Claude Gellée and Jean-Antoine Watteau, and largely complete collections of the works of all the great printmakers including Dürer, Rembrandt and Goya. More than 30,000 British drawings and watercolours include important examples of work by William Hogarth, Paul Sandby, J. M. W. Turner, Thomas Girtin, John Constable, John Sell Cotman, David Cox, James Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson and George Cruikshank. There are about a million British prints including more than 20,000 satires and outstanding collections of works by William Blake and Thomas Bewick. The Department of Asia contains over 75,000 objects covering the whole Asian continent and from the Neolithic up to the present day and includes the most comprehensive collection of sculpture from the Indian subcontinent in the world, including the celebrated Buddhist limestone reliefs from Amaravati, an outstanding collection of Chinese antiquities, paintings, and porcelain, lacquer, bronze, jade, and other applied arts, Buddhist paintings from Dunhuang and the Admonitions Scroll by Chinese artist Gu Kaizhi (344–406 AD) and the most comprehensive collection of Japanese pre-20th century art in the Western world, including a copy of The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai, stunning works by Hiroshige, Harunobu and others.

The British Museum houses one of the world's greatest and most comprehensive collections of Ethnographic material from Africa, Oceania and the Americas, representing the cultures of indigenous peoples throughout the world. The Sainsbury African Galleries display 600 objects from the greatest permanent collection of African arts and culture in the world. The three permanent galleries provide a substantial exhibition space for the Museum's African collection comprising over 200,000 objects, including both unique masterpieces of artistry and objects of everyday life. Highlights of the African collection include the Benin Bronzes, a magnificent brass head of a Yoruba ruler from Ife, Nigeria, Asante goldwork from Ghana and the Torday collection of Central African sculpture, textiles and weaponry. The Americas collection mainly consists of 19th and 20th century items although the Inca, Aztec, Maya and other early cultures are well represented. The Department of the Middle East has collections representing the civilizations of the ancient Near East and its adjacent areas. These include Mesopotamia, Persia, the Arabian Peninsula, Anatolia, the Caucasus, parts of Central Asia, Syria, Palestine and Phoenician settlements in the western Mediterranean from the prehistoric period until the beginning of Islam in the 7th century. The collection includes six iconic winged human-headed statues from Nimrud and Khorsabad. Stone bas-reliefs, including the famous Royal Lion Hunt relief's that were found in the palaces of the Assyrian kings at Nimrud and Nineveh. The Royal Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh and Sumerian treasures found in Royal Cemetery's at Ur of the Chaldees. The museum's collection of Islamic art and archaeological material, numbers about 40,000 objects, one of the largest in the world. As such, it contains a broad range of Islamic pottery, paintings, tiles, metalwork, glass, seals, and inscriptions. The Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities of the British Museum has one of the world's largest and most comprehensive collections of antiquities from the Classical world, with over 100,000 objects. These mostly range in date from the beginning of the Greek Bronze Age (about 3200BC) to the reign of the Roman Emperor Constantine I in the 4th century AD. The Cycladic, Minoan and Mycenaean cultures are represented, and the Greek collection includes important sculpture from the Parthenon in Athens, as well as elements of two of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos and the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos. The Department also houses one of the widest-ranging collections of Italic and Etruscan antiquities and extensive groups of material from Cyprus.

With such a vast collection and limited display space, many of the British Museum’s temporary exhibitions focus on specific items or groups of items from their own collection, with possible additions on loan from other institutions. “The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead” (until 6 March 2011), focuses on the illustrated spells designed to guide the deceased through the dangers of the underworld, ultimately ensuring eternal life. Many of the examples of the Book of the Dead in the exhibition have never been seen before, and many are from the British Museum’s unparalleled collection. In addition to the unique works on papyrus and linen, superbly crafted funerary figurines (shabtis), amulets, jewellery, statues and coffins illustrate the many stages of the journey from death to the afterlife. “Picasso to Julie Mehretu - Modern drawings from the British Museum collection” (until 25 April) showcases many of the great artists of the 20th century, starting with Picasso’s study for his masterpiece “Les Demoiselles d'Avignon”, the painting that shook the art world in 1907. It also features works by E L Kirchner, Otto Dix, Matisse, Magritte, David Smith and Louise Bourgeois and major contemporary artists, including Anselm Kiefer, Gerhard Richter and William Kentridge. The exhibition concludes with Julie Mehretu, the Ethiopian-born artist who is one of the stars of the international contemporary art scene with acclaimed solo exhibitions at the Guggenheim in New York and across the world. “Images and sacred texts-Buddhism across Asia” (until 3 April 2011) includes sacred texts, painted scrolls and sculptures from Sri Lanka to Japan. “Adornment and identity-Jewelry and costume from Oman” and “Traditional jewelry and dress from the Balkans” (both until 11 September 2011) are unique displays jewelry, male and female dress and more. “Lasting impressions-Seals from the Islamic World” (until 23 February 2011) is a travelling photographic exhibition from the British Library and the British Museum. This small display explores how Islamic seals were made and used, what was written on them and how they were decorated. On display will be images of clay, metal and gemstone seals from the British Museum dating from the 9th to the 19th centuries, and seal impressions stamped on royal letters, documents and manuscript books held in the British Library. Later this year (from 26 May 2011 until 11 September 2011), the British Museum will feature “Out of Australia Prints and drawings from Sidney Nolan to Rover Thomas”. The exhibition is the first exhibition of Australian works on paper of this scale and ambition to be held outside Australia. It features 125 works on paper by 60 artists, from the 1940s modernists to contemporary artists and Indigenous Australian printmakers, all drawn from the British Museum’s impressive collection. Artists featured include, Albert Tucker and Arthur Boyd, James Gleeson, Robert Klippel, Brett Whiteley and Colin Lanceley.