The British Museum [antikvár]

INTRODUCTIONT^HE BRITISH MUSEUM is approaching tlie 250tli anniversary of its foundation. Its principal aims today areto be at the centre of international scholarship and to disseminate knowledge for the education, in the widest sense of the word, of all. This is achieved through display at the British Museum, and elsewhere by loans, a vigorous programme of lectures and seminars, and publication in large numbers of articles and books. From its earliest days in the eighteenth century, the Museum collected, displayed, stored and preserved the works of mankind (and, at that time, the works of nature too) with great earnestness. This was the Age of Enlightenment, and as the author of the first Museum guide wrote in 1761, 'Curiosity almost universally prevails . . . Nothing can conduce more to preserve the Learning which this latter Age abounds with, than having Repositories in every Nation to contain its Antiquities, such as is the Museum of Britain.'ABOVESir Hans Shane (1660-1753). His collections constituted the foundation of the British Museum in 1153. Engraving by I. Faber, 172S.The British Museum has never simply been a museum of antiquities o'" Britain. In fact, for its first century of exis. enee, rather little of British origin was collected. From the very beginning interests were universal, and though fashions in collecting can be detected over the years, the collection as it exists today must be the most balanced, in terms of world cultures and chronology, that exists anywhere. The collections are vast. For many of its temporary exhibitions, the British Museum does not need to borrow; it can simply dip into its remarkable reserves to treat subjects as diverse as Gold firom South America, the Culture of the Maldives, Rembrandt Drawings and Hindu Religion. The founding collection was formed by Sir Hans Sloane, a physician by profession and an antiquarian by inchnation. Born in 1660, Sloane was, from the first, devoted to scientific enquiry. After a speU in the West Indies, he wrote a book on the natural history of Jamaica.LEFTMontagu House, the first home of the British Museum.BELOWStuffed giraffes on the staircase of the old museum in Montagu House.