Ashmolean

We've been to Oxford several times. In 2009, the Ashmolean was closed for renovations. Vicki thinks we had seen it on earlier visits, but I was too young to remember. We'll be back in Oxford in a week or so with Rebecca, but we thought we'd better see the Ashmolean (again?) before having to share it with our beautiful 2-year-old grand-daughter.

Entrance; it is England's oldest museum, 17th century

The renovation in 2009 was more than that;
here is a museum with a consistent and
thorough emphasis on education and not
merely warehousing of works; above, in a
large and informative section on conservation,
restoration, and such, is a view of what a
Roman statue really looked like

I think the Ashmolean's strengths are more in history and
archaeology--Oxford faculty dug up much of the eastern
Mediterranean, Egypt and such--but the paintings
collection is of interest too; here is Ucello's intriguing 1472
Hunt in the Forest, totally secular, mixed oil and tempera
on both canvas and panel; how transitional can you get?

Last bust of Michelangelo

Titan's Giacomo Doria

Reynolds' George, Earl of Harcourt, and wife Elizabeth, and
brother George

A frowny-faced Franz Hals portrait of a woman

A nice Courbet pre-impressionist landscape

There were lots of others...Poussain, Tintoretto, van Dyck,
et al., but I can never resist a Claude Lorrain, here, his
Landscape with Ascanius Shooting the Stag of Sylvia

Now in the Egyptology section, Vicki admiring
the full frontal pose of the Koptos sculptures,
3300 BC, said to be the oldest such (nevermind
the paleolithic friezes and sculptures we've seen
elsewhere)

Tomb siding stolen from somewhere in Egypt (and you
wonder why they hate us...)

Nice mummy

Nice jar (sleeps two)

The Ashmolean has no Turners--not surprisingly: he was the
consummate commoner--but does display four of his works,
on loan (from an alum, presumably); here, I thought I'd end
with his Oxford, View of High Street