Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology

Upon its establishment in 1683, the Ashmolean Museum became Britain's first public museum and the first ever university museum. The original "Museum" was born from Elias Ashmole's personal collection and was located in the London building that today houses the Museum of the History of Science. After a series of transformations to the collection, including the addition of archaeological artifacts and research capacities, the Museum officially became the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology in 1908. Today, the Museum's collection is distributed across five curatorial departments: Antiquities, Casts, Coins, East Art, and Western Art. Further, as part of the University of Oxford, the Ashmolean Museum is dedicated to facilitating academic engagement through its educational programming and research. Through such programming and research, both Oxford students and the community beyond the university gain access to a plethora of resourcing tracing global human cultures across history.