British Museum

The British Museum in London is the United Kingdom's - and one of the world's - largest and most important museums of human history and culture. The museum was established in 1753 and was based largely on the collections of the physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane. The museum first opened to the public on January 15, 1759 in Montagu House in Bloomsbury, on the site of the current museum building.

The collections

The British Museum of today is primarily a museum of antiquities and ethnography. Lack of space has meant that it has had to shed its collections of natural history and books, but it still claims the mantle of 'universal museum'. The permanent exhibition on the Enlightenment in the King's Library gives some idea of the original scope of the museum.

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In London the main collections of Western fine art and global applied art are housed in the independent National Gallery and Victoria and Albert Museums, respectively. However, the British Museum retains its Department of Prints and Drawings, which includes a cartoon by Michelangelo and many other works of artistic merit.

Related Topics:
National Gallery - Victoria and Albert Museum - Cartoon - Michelangelo

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Highlights of the collections include:

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• The Elgin Marbles, carvings from the Athenian Parthenon
• The Portland Vase
• The Rosetta Stone
• The Stein collection from Central Asia
• The Clock Room
• Works by Albrecht Dürer: 1 volume of sketches and 4 volumes of manuscripts
• Egyptian Mummies
• The Benin Bronzes
• Anglo-Saxon artifacts from the Sutton Hoo burial
• The Lewis Chessmen
• The Mold cape (a Bronze age gold ceremonial cape)
• The basalt statue Hoa Hakananai'a from Easter Island
• The echo in the reading room, which Gerard Hoffnung recommended

The notorious Cupboard 55 in the Department of Medieval and Later Antiquities, inaccessible by the public and known as 'the Secretum', has a reputation for containing some of the most erotic objects in the British Museum. Though claiming to be from ancient cultures, many of the objects are Victorian fakes and are deemed unfit for public display on grounds of quality, rather than because of their supposed obscenity.

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