British Museum
The world's first museum open to the public.
The British Museum, also known as the British Museum, is the national museum of Britain, located in the Great Russell Square north of New Oxford Street in London, England.
As early as 1753, Sir hans sloane, a British doctor, naturalist and collector, left a will before his death and donated all his personal collections of 7 1000 pieces, a large number of plant specimens, books and manuscripts to the country. The state accepted his gift and approved the establishment of the British Museum on June 7, 1753. At the beginning of the museum, most of the collections consisted of books, manuscripts, natural specimens of some cultural relics (including coins, badges, prints and sketches) and ethnography of cultural studies. From 65438 to 0757, King George II donated the collection of the "Old Royal Library" of the British monarch to the museum.
1759 65438+1October 15, the British Museum officially opened to the public, becoming the first museum open to the public in the world, and all those who are "eager to learn" can enter for free. Since then, the collection has become richer and richer, and the government has expanded it many times. By the early19th century, the museum had many famous collections, including Rosetta Stone, Tangli's classical sculpture collection and Parthenon sculpture. 1823, George IV donated his father's library, the King's Library, as a gift to the country, which contributed to the completion of the quadrangle building designed by Sir Robert Smirke today. 1824, the museum built a new building in the north of the original Monta ancient building, which was completed in 1840, and the old Monta ancient building was demolished soon. Shortly after the new building was built, a circular reading room opened to the public was built in the yard.
185 1 year, Sir augustus wollaston Franks was appointed as the museum to be responsible for the collection and management of British and medieval historical materials. Franks expanded his collection to a new field, not only collecting British and medieval antiquities, but also collecting information on prehistory, ethnology and archaeology in Europe and outside Europe, as well as Asian artworks and other cultural relics, thus enriching the museum's collection. In order to provide more space for the museum's ever-increasing collection, 19' s natural history collection was moved to a new museum in south kensington District (now the Natural History Museum), and the British Museum specializes in collecting archaeological relics. 1900, the museum was divided again, and books, manuscripts and other contents were separated to form a new British library and become a part of the British Museum.
At the beginning of the 20th century, museums continued to expand public buildings. In 2008 and 2009, four new permanent exhibition halls were built and opened, including China Pottery Museum and percival David Collection Museum. At present, the museum is preparing for the next major architectural project-the World Conservation and Exhibition Center.
The area of the British Museum
At present, the core building of the British Museum covers an area of about 56,000 square meters. On both sides of the main entrance of the museum, there are eight thick and tall Roman columns. Located in the center of the British Museum, the Grand Atrium is the largest covered square in Europe. The top of the square is made up of 1656 pieces of glass with strange shapes. The reading room of the British Museum is in the center of the square and is open to the public. The whole museum has more than 100 exhibition rooms, including Egyptian Museum, Greek and Roman Museum, Western Asia Museum, European Medieval Museum and Oriental Art Museum, covering an area of 670,000 square meters, with more than 8 million exhibits. Among them, the treasure of the town hall is Yani's Book of the Dead, written on papyrus around 1300 BC, with a total length of 24 meters and a length of 60 chapters, which depicts the mantras and conventions needed by the deceased to obtain eternal life in the afterlife. Oriental cultural relics in the collection include works of art from China, India, Japan, Korea, Persia, South Asia and Southeast Asia. Among China's collections, Gu Kaizhi, a painter of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, is the most striking, and Stein's exquisite Shang and Zhou bronzes and a large number of Dunhuang cultural relics brought to Britain are also extremely important treasures. Ancient Roman ruins, ancient Greek statues and Egyptian mummies are also famous all over the world.
In the history of the British Museum, except for the months when 1972 was combined with the two world wars, it has been open to the public free of charge, and the number of visitors has increased from more than 5,000 per year to more than 6 million today.
Louvre museum, France
Overview of European art history exhibition hall
Located on the north bank of the Seine River in the center of Paris, France, the Louvre is one of the oldest, largest and most famous museums in the world. Founded in 1204, it has reached today's scale after more than 800 years of expansion and reconstruction. The Louvre covers an area of about 45 hectares (including lawns) and the building covers an area of 4.8 hectares. The whole building is U-shaped and is divided into old and new parts. The old one was built in the period of Louis XIV and the new one was built in the period of Napoleon. The pyramid-shaped glass entrance in front of the palace was designed by Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei.
As early as the Crusade, Philip II built a castle leading to the Seine River here at 1204, which was used to defend the Paris area on the north bank, mainly for storing royal archives and treasures, as well as his dogs and prisoners of war. At that time, it was called the Louvre. During the period of Charles V, the Louvre was used as a palace, which made it a completely different building. In the next 350 years, with the increasing demands of the royal family for pleasure, they constantly added gorgeous towers and unique rooms. However, during the whole 150 years, there was no king living in the Louvre.
/kloc-In the middle of the 6th century, after Francis I succeeded to the throne, he demolished this palace. He ordered the architect Pierre Leiskow to rebuild a palace on the basis of the original castle. Francis also asked the famous painter at that time to paint his portrait. He worshipped Italian painters and bought paintings by the most famous Italian painter at that time, including Mona Lisa and other treasures. After Francis I's son Henry II ascended the throne, he rebuilt everything his father destroyed.
During the reign of Henry IV, it took him 13 years to build the grand gallery, the most spectacular part of the Louvre. This is a 300-meter-long gorgeous corridor, which is very long. Henry planted trees, raised birds and dogs here, and even chased foxes in the corridor on horseback. Louis XIV was a famous king in French history. He is called "the king of the sun". He was only five years old when he ascended the throne, but he has been king in the Louvre for 72 years, the longest reigning king in French history. Louis XIV built the Louvre into a square courtyard and built a magnificent gallery outside the courtyard. He bought paintings from various European schools, including Kardashian, Rembrandt and others. He was obsessed with art and architecture all his life, leaving the French treasury empty. During the reign of Louis XVI, the famous 1789 Revolution broke out, and the first guillotine of the French Revolution was built in the courtyard of the "Arena" in the Louvre. 1792 On May 27th, the National Assembly announced that the Louvre would belong to the public and become a public museum. On August 1793 and 10, the Louvre Art Museum officially opened to the public and became a museum. Since then, the collection here has been increasing, not to mention the artistic tribute that Napoleon requisitioned from those conquered countries.
Today, the collection catalogue of the museum records 400,000 works of art, which consists of seven parts and six exhibition halls, including ancient Egyptian art, ancient oriental art, ancient Greek and Roman art, medieval Renaissance sculpture art, modern sculpture art, arts and crafts art and painting art. Among them, the treasures of the town hall are: Venus statue on Milos Island, the statue of the goddess of victory without head and broken arm, and the rare and famous painting Mona Lisa by Italian painter leonardo da vinci. It is no exaggeration to say that the Louvre has become an art hall that comprehensively examines European history. However, it is difficult for tourists to see "its whole picture" because its six exhibition halls are basically open only on Mondays and Wednesdays, and the remaining four days are open in turn, and only half of them are open on Sundays, and the exhibits on display only account for three-fifths of the total collection.
Tash Museum, Elmy, Russia
Large art and cultural palace
Tashi Museum in Elmy, also known as hermitage museum, is located on the Neva River in St Petersburg. The Winter Palace designed by the famous architect Rastrelli is an outstanding example of Russian Baroque architecture in the middle of18th century.
/kloc-In the second half of the 8th century, the Russian Queen Catherine II, who loves collecting, set aside a part of her house in the Winter Palace to store 250 paintings of Rembrandt and Rubens that she bought from Berlin, and called the place where she treasured these things "Tashi, Elmy". The word "Elmy Tashi" comes from French, which means a quiet place. Later, in order to show his power, Catherine II constantly acquired and collected a large number of works of art, and kept his collection here one after another. With the increase of the collection, from 1764 to 1789, Little Hermitage and Great Elmy Tashi were built one after another, becoming veritable private museums. After the death of Katrina II, the owners of the Winter Palace have continuously enriched and improved the museum in this palace, and the collection is increasing day by day. 1852, in order to show off the elegance of these collections to the society, the czar government arranged them and officially opened them to the public. At that time, the whole palace consisted of three floors, about 230 meters long, 140 meters wide and 22 meters high. It is a closed rectangle, covering an area of 90,000 square meters and a building area of more than 46,000 square meters.
19 17 Before February, the Winter Palace was always the palace of the tsar, and was later occupied by the bourgeois provisional government. 1917165438+1On October 7th, the uprising people captured the Winter Palace. At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, in order to ensure the safety of the collection, the museum transported 1 18000 pieces to Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) in the rear for preservation, and the rest of the collection was tightly sealed in the basement of the museum until the end of the war.
1922, the new government allocated the original official residence and the whole winter palace to Tashi, Elmy, and formally established the Tashi Museum in Elmy. Since then, the Tashi Museum in Elmy consists of Winter Palace, Little Winter Palace, Tashi in Old Elmy, Tashi in New Elmy, Winter Palace Reserve and Tashi Theatre in Elmy, which can accommodate more than 500 spectators. It has eight departments, including the Primitive Culture Department, the Ancient Greek and Roman World Department, the Oriental Ethnic Culture Department, the Russian Cultural History Department, the Coin Department, the Western European Art Department, the Science Education Department and the Restoration and Preservation Department, with a collection of more than 2.7 million pieces. The paintings in the collection are world-famous, ranging from the oldest religious paintings in Byzantium to Matisse, Picasso and other impressionist modern paintings, with more than 65,438+05,800 post-impressionist paintings. Among them, two portraits of the Madonna by Italian Leonardo da Vinci, The Madonna and Sancta familia by Raphael, The Return of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt in the Netherlands and famous paintings by Titian, Rubens, Velazquez and Renoir are extremely precious. In addition, there are 6.5438+0.2 million sculptures, more than 600,000 line drawings, more than 6.5438+0.000 coins, medals and commemorative medals and 224,000 practical artworks ... The exhibits of the museum are displayed in more than 400 exhibition halls according to geographical location and time sequence, including special exhibitions such as gold and silver vessels, clothes, gifts, paintings and handicrafts, as well as bedrooms, restaurants, lounges and reception rooms in the Tsarist era. The treasure of the town hall is the "sitting statue of Voltaire". Museums The Oriental Art Museum has 6.5438+0.6 million exhibits since 4000 BC, including thousands of ancient Egyptian cultural relics such as sarcophagus, mummies, reliefs, papyrus documents, sacrificial articles and Coptic textiles, the world's largest Iranian silverware, and cultural relics from countries such as Babylon, Assyria and Turkey. The most striking thing in the museum is the exhibition hall of Peter the Great, which displays the clothes worn by Peter the Great, the medals he wore, the weapons he used and his portraits, some of which were made by himself. In a glass cabinet in the exhibition hall, there is a wax statue of Peter the Great, whose hair is the real hair of Peter the Great himself, which reproduces the majesty of the monarch. There is a wooden pole next to the portrait, and a line is engraved on the top of the wooden pole, which is more than two meters high, indicating that Peter the Great is more than two meters tall.
According to reports, Elmy Tashi Museum has a total exhibition line of 30 kilometers, which is known as the longest art museum in the world. It takes more than 4 hours to complete the race at normal speed. If you stay in front of each exhibit for 1 minute, it will take 1 1 year if it is calculated as 8 hours per day.
Metropolitan Museum of New York
The largest museum in the western hemisphere
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, also known as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the City Museum of New York, is located at 82nd Street, Fifth Avenue, New York, USA, opposite to the famous American Museum of Natural History.
The origin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York can be traced back to 1866. At an American Independence Day celebration in Boulogne Forest, john jay, the grandson and lawyer of the first justice of the US Supreme Court, declared that it was time for Americans to set up their own art museum, and organized a preparatory committee shortly thereafter. 1870, the new York state legislature approved the articles of association of the metropolitan museum of art, and the museum officially started construction in the former site of the Dodsworth dance school at 68 1 Fifth Avenue in New York. In the same year, the Franco-Prussian War broke out, and the United States actively purchased many works of art that survived the war. 1880, the museum moved to its current site and officially opened. It was later built near the opening of the museum until 1902 was completed.
The Metropolitan Museum is backed by new york Central Park and has a quiet environment. However, the architecture does not reflect American creativity. The high steps and huge colonnade are as rigid and monotonous as any standard museum. However, the contents of the exhibition are rich and varied, reflecting the American style with sufficient funds and high style. The entire 2460-year-old Egyptian tomb was relocated in the giant glass cover in the hall specially built by the museum, which is amazing and can be described as the treasure of the town hall. The Fashion Museum is also the best in the world, with a collection of/kloc-0.5 million pieces of national costumes from five continents in the past four centuries.
Since then, the number of museum collections has increased rapidly, and the art treasures and donations donated by Morgan, Rockefeller and other rich people have greatly enriched the museum's collections. After the first world war, the museum received donations and materials in an endless stream. In addition, the museum itself actively participates in the excavation of ancient cultural relics in various places and spares no effort to protect human cultural heritage. With the increasing collection, the museum has been expanded several times, and now it covers a total area of10.3 million square meters, with three floors and 248 exhibition rooms. It has collected various cultural relics and artistic treasures from Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, the Far East and Near East, Greece and Rome, Europe, Africa, pre-Columbian America and New Guinea in the past 5,000 years. Including buildings, sculptures, paintings, sketches, prints, photos, glassware, ceramics, textiles, metalwork, furniture, ancient houses, weapons, armor and musical instruments in all historical periods, among which the treasures of the town hall include the Egyptian ancient tomb placed in a giant glass cover and Degas canvas oil painting Dance Classroom.
Today, although the Metropolitan Museum of New York occupies less than 8 hectares, which is only 1/9 of the Palace Museum in Beijing, its exhibition area is very large, exceeding 24 hectares, which is twice that of the Palace Museum. The tens of thousands of exhibits exhibited all the year round are just the tip of the iceberg of the museum's total inventory-the number of all exhibits in the Metropolitan Museum has reached 3.3 million. Among many exhibition halls, the Egyptian Pavilion has a three-story Egyptian monument-Dande Temple, which covers an area of one acre. The original of this temple was moved to the museum for exhibition, and the scene was spectacular; The Far East Pavilion was specially built by craftsmen from China to imitate Suzhou gardens, and all the stones and timber were also shipped from China.
At present, the museum has a 19 professional department responsible for the collection, preservation and display of various collections, and a juvenile art museum, aiming at cultivating artistic talents from an early age. Besides education, promotion, research and preservation, the museum also invites marketing experts to systematically develop art goods. Every year, the museum's artistic gifts are sold all over the world, which increases its income. Every Christmas, the gift shop and bookstore in the museum are as crowded as department stores. It is reported that this museum attracts more than 5 million tourists every year, and it is one of the most popular tourist attractions in new york.