Abstract
A FUBTHEB extension of the Ashmolean Museum in the University of Oxford was opened by Lord Crawford and Balcarres on April 25, towards the cost of which the Worshipful Company of Drapers has contributed the sum of £10,000. The Master of the Company, Sir Auston Harris, in the course of his remarks at the opening ceremony, said that while the City Companies can no longer vie with the munificent gifts of wealthy Englishmen, or with great American corporations, this gift would serve as another mark of the respect and esteem which an ancient City Company bears towards an ancient University. The extension is on the north-east corner of the building, and provides for the Museum's Egyptian collections, which it has now been possible to arrange in chronological order, a lecture room, and a storage basement. A set of smaller rooms on six floors has been built between the new wing and the Taylorian Institution. Here are students workrooms, a room for the keeper, Mr. E. T. Leeds, and rooms for the preparation of exhibits. This is the third extension added to the buildings in five years, and marks the final stage in the plans for the enlargement of the accommodation to relieve pressure on the Museum's space. The first extension was the provision of the Weldon Gallery in 1934, and the second was the addition of the Griffith Institute, which was opened in January last. The gallery in which the Egyptian collections were formerly housed has now been divided by screens into three rooms, to be devoted respectively to the European prehistoric period, covering the stone and bronze ages, the Minoan collection, by the gifts of Sir Arthur Evans now the finest in existence, and the Near Eastern Collections.
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Further Extension of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Nature 143, 755 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/143755c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/143755c0