Ashmolean Museum

The Ashmolean Museum (in full the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology) in Oxford, England is the world's first university museum. Its first building was designed by Sir Christopher Wren and built in 1678 – 1683 to house the collection of curiosities Elias Ashmole gave Oxford University in 1677 — the ones he had collected himself as well as those he had inherited from the travellers John Tradescant, father and son. The collection included antique coins, books, engravings, geological specimens, and zoological specimens — one of which was the stuffed body of the last dodo ever seen in Europe, but by 1755 it was so moth-eaten it was destroyed, except for its head and one claw. The museum opened on 6 June 1683, with naturalist Robert Plot as the first keeper.

External links

• Ashmolean Museum webpage
• Sackler Library
• Museum of the History of Science