Vol. 152 / No. 1282
Vol. 152 / No. 1282
There is a sticky moment for anyone associated with this
Magazine when they begin a visit to the newly extended and redisplayed
Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. In an introductory section to the collections in
the lower ground-floor galleries, a showcase on fakes and forgeries contains an
attractive silver reliquary head. The accompanying label notes that the head
was published in the Burlington in 1919 as an Italian piece dating to the
1100s. Then owned by the prominent collector Henry Harris, it was subsequently
acquired by the Ashmolean, where it was later discovered to be of composition
metal only possible after c.1800. This nice example of the triumph of technical
analysis over connoisseurship immediately puts visitors on their mettle. It and
its surrounding tasters on conservation, the Museum’s history and ‘Exploring
the Past’ make quite clear the multi-layered nature of the new display of the
Museum’s holdings, all coming under the capacious if somewhat anodyne heading
‘Crossing Cultures Crossing Time’.
But first the building itself must be applauded. There is no
doubt that the transformed Ashmolean is a major addition to the changing
landscape of museums in Britain. The architect of the extension, Rick Mather,
has provided a beautiful and ingenious solution to a difficult site. Behind the
imposing porticoed building of 1845 by Charles Cockerell, all later additions
have been demolished to make way for thirty-nine new galleries on five levels,
as well as many of the services expected of an up-to-date museum, such as an
education centre and new conservation studios. A great bonus is the new glass
entrance under the portico, the only feature that announces changes have taken
place (for the new building is invisible from the street). A few paces straight
ahead and one is in Mather territory rather than Cockerell’s. Two finely
detailed, easily negotiable staircases run between the floors, offering
intriguing views of the galleries at every stage. Although the new addition has
no façades of its own, hemmed in, as it is, by earlier buildings, there is no
sense of claustrophobia; all is light and airy. The galleries vary greatly in
size and form – from extended treasure trove to the small and intimate – all
with their own personalised lighting. Many of Cockerell’s older galleries –
predominantly those given over to European painting – have been refurbished;
one moves effortlessly between old and new, from upholstered familiarity to
reassuring moderne.
One or two commentators, with a just perceptible hint of
criticism, have characterised the new building as ‘polite’. This is true – and
is a great strength. Cockerell’s venerable edifice, like an imperious stage
duchess turning a blind eye to life on Beaumont Street and the upstart
Neo-Gothic of the Randolph Hotel, needed respect and politesse from a sprightly
heir, hard on her heels. This Mather has shown admirably with neither fawning
emulation nor a desire to shock. He is perhaps a shade restless but this can
add to the excitement of discovery.
The Ashmolean’s extraordinarily varied collections of art and
archaeology, founded as they were on the Tradescants’ hoard of curiosities, had
need of a building that could internally accommodate this variety – from coins
and clothes to pots and paintings – within a coherent concept of display. This
is not a building into which a museum’s holdings have simply been decanted. The
exhibition design firm Metaphor has developed the ‘innovative display
strategy’, basing it on the idea that, across the centuries, cultures have
overlapped and interacted. We are therefore on the somewhat stale ground of
contemporary multiculturalism. What is perhaps new is the relative lack of
emphasis on the religious dimension (although this is often taken care of on
individual labels) and the playing down of formal and aesthetic connections in
favour of materials and utility, trading routes and diplomatic exchange.
Within its own terms it has been thoroughly thought through, with all
curatorial hands on deck. The historic departmental divisions of the Ashmolean
are interwoven in a story that is essentially material-based, culturally
omnivorous and fully contextualised. Most of the works on show are anonymous –
from modest craftsmen to obviously highly sophisticated but nameless artists.
The textile collection is revealed for the first time; there are superb
displays of Islamic and Chinese art, ceramics above all; tribute is paid to
Ancient and Medieval Cyprus and India is comprehensibly visible (but there is
virtually nothing on the civilisations of the Americas; travel is always East
from Western Europe). By the third floor we are in the Renaissance; we whizz
through Japan; there is an innovative room on Britain and Italy. But somewhere
here might there not have been one especially prepared room for a selection
from the Museum’s great collection of works on paper? Access to the Western Art
Print Room is available only by request.
Through many of these galleries runs a subtext that draws
attention to the Museum’s history and benefactors and to the archaeologists
responsible for unearthing so much that has come to rest in Oxford. Interesting
as all this is, it can be distracting, breaking the spell of the objects
themselves, already abundant and fully (if sometimes banally) labelled. Perhaps
one room dedicated to this unpicking of the Museum’s history would have been
sufficient.
On the penultimate level (below a rooftop restaurant) we
reach the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, predominantly showing paintings.
Here, jumps in chronology and school are erratic – the paintings collection of
the Ashmolean, unlike its drawings, is not one of its glories. The emphatic
contextualisation controlling the earlier displays eases off, as though
Metaphor and the curators had run out of breath. After the focused rooms on the
Pre-Raphaelites, the Pissarro family and Sickert and his contemporaries, the
gallery devoted to modern art is perfunctory and miscellaneous. More
substantial works are needed here to quicken the pulse and end on a higher
note. Four new, currently empty galleries for temporary exhibitions will come
into their own later in the year. But what a relief it is to find no
interventions by contemporary artists, no celebrity names to distract us from
one of the greatest of all cabinets of curiosities now in its splendid new
setting.