Ashmolean Museum

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, museum of art and antiquities, the earliest museum in Britain to open to the public, in 1683. It was founded by the historian and antiquary Elias Ashmole (1617-1692), who in 1678 offered to the University of Oxford the vast “cabinet of curiosities” that had been left to him by the famous collectors, the John Tradescants, father and son, in 1659. The building in which the collections are now housed, in Beaumont Street in the centre of Oxford, was completed in 1845 to the designs of C. R. Cockerell, and it is an important example of Neo-Classical architecture. In August 2004 the museum received planning permission for a development plan that will double its display space and create an education centre and conservation studios.

The Ashmolean Museum, whose holdings were substantially added to since 1683, now houses the University of Oxford's collections of fine and decorative arts, antiquities, and coins. Its outstanding collection of Western European art, which ranges from the early Renaissance to the early 20th century, includes significant works by Paolo Uccello, Piero di Cosimo, Claude Lorrain, and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, and important Pre-Raphaelite paintings. The prints and drawings department contains some 70 Raphael drawings and a key collection of Samuel Palmer's works on paper.

Among its antiquities is a fine group of Classical sculpture and the best collection of ancient Cretan art outside Crete. The decorative arts include major holdings of British and European ceramics and silver, Chinese and Japanese ceramics, and modern Chinese paintings. The Heberden Coin Room has the most important collection of coins and medals in the world outside the British Museum.