‘Thank you. It’s magnificent,’ said Philip Pullman as he opened the new extension at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology in Oxford at the end of October.
‘Thank you. It’s magnificent,’ said Philip Pullman as he opened the new extension at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology in Oxford at the end of October. And magnificent it certainly is, a triumphant reinvention of the Ashmolean, with 39 new galleries being added in this inspired development designed by Rick Mather Associates. The orientation of the museum has been radically altered, bringing archaeology and antiquity into the foreground. Given the roots of the Ashmolean, founded in 1683 with the Tradescant Collection, and with other collections including the Arundel Marbles, which arrived in 1755, this is a natural and timely adjustment to the steering.
The visitor is greeted by the colossal plaster cast of Apollo, after a Roman version of a Greek original, pointing left to the Aegean galleries, where in a sense he came from.
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