Ashmolean Museum

📣 Tickets are now on sale for our next major exhibition Money Talks: Art, Society & Power. The exhibition will explore the intersection between money and art through different artistic lenses, from ancient coins and royal portraiture to protest pieces and cryptocurrency. Featuring works by some of the world’s best-known artists, from Rembrandt to Banksy, Money Talks will reveal how currency and art come together in design and culture to promote, and often challenge, our views. 🎟️ Money Talks: Art, Society & Power opens on Friday 9 August. Visit the link in our bio to book. ⁠ ⁠ 🏛️ Members go for free. 👗 Money Dress, Susan Stockwell, 2010. International currency notes, cotton thread, canvas & mannequin frame © Susan Stockwell #AshmoleanMuseum #Ashmolean #Museum #Oxford

On 13 and 14 July, join in on free drop-in activities for all ages at our Festival of Art & Archaeology, exploring the Medieval World of the Wilton Diptych. Make your own medieval crafts, listen to medieval stories, have a go at gold leafing and more! See more Festival activities and events via the link in our bio. #AshmoleanMuseum #Ashmolean #Museum #Oxford #OxfordForKids

Blustery clouds on a summer's evening are tinged with yellow above the low skyline in this atmospheric oil on paper attributed to John Constable. It has been suggested that this small painting could be the work of one of his sons; Alfred and Lionel both studied art and exhibited at the Royal Academy in London. You can view this work by appointment in the Western Art Print Room. 🌅 Summer Sunset, mid-1800s, attributed to John Constable (1776–1837). Oil on paper, 10 x 17.8 cm. WA1937.74 #JohnConstable #AshmoleanMuseum #Ashmolean #Museum #Oxford

This Iranian bowl is over 800 years old. It is made from fritware, has rounded flaring sides, and is decorated with brown lustre over a colourless glaze. See it on display in the Islamic Middle East gallery on Level 1. 🌞 Bowl with human-faced sun, 1171–1200. EA1978.2256 #AshmoleanMuseum #Ashmolean #Museum #Oxford

In ancient and medieval societies, gods and goddesses were central to how people saw the world. ‘Demon, Mother, Maker of Kings’, a new display in our Ancient Middle East gallery, offers a glimpse into the many surprising forms of power wielded by female divinities of the ancient world. Pictured here is the goddess Durga, a fierce warrior, and slayer of the buffalo demon Mahishasuramardini. She is the embodiment of ‘shakti’: creative and destructive female energy. The display is part of the Global Gender and the Goddess Project, a collaboration between the University of Oxford History Faculty and the Ashmolean Museum, exploring interpretations of global gender and depictions of the goddess against the backdrop of myths of matriarchy in the ancient world. ⚔️ Durga slays the buffalo demon Mahishasuramardini (detail), 17th century, India. Gouache on paper, 10.9 x 20.2 cm. EA2012.289 #AshmoleanMuseum #Ashmolean #Museum #Durga #AncientGoddess #Goddesses #GenderHistory #Oxford

This drawing by Maerten de Vos depicts a scene from Ovid’s poem Metamorphoses. The embracing figures are Cadmus, founder and king of Thebes, and his wife Hermione. Punished by the gods for unknowingly killing a sacred dragon, Cadmus was transformed into a snake, whilst his devastated wife begged the gods to grant her the same fate. Here they are presented mid-transformation, in a sensuously tragic embrace. The snakes have been rendered as dragons, perhaps to add another cruel layer of irony to the gods’ punishment. The work is one of many designs for festive decorations that adorned Antwerp in 1594 for the joyous entry of Archduke Ernest of Austria. Joyous entries were celebrations where newly appointed governors could establish their rule, and processions were held against a backdrop of monumental gateways and painted triumphal arches. Maerten de Vos was responsible for many of the temporary decorations painted all over Antwerp. He has annotated this sheet with instructions for positioning the image in the overall design scheme: ‘the left side should be above’. The temporary nature of these decorations means that they have been invariably lost to time, and it is only through drawings like these that we can understand the scale of these celebrations. See this work today in Bruegel to Rubens: Great Flemish Drawings, on the final day of the exhibition. ✏️ Cadmus and Hermione: Design for the Decorations of the City of Antwerp on the Occasion of the Joyous Entry of Archduke Ernest of Austria in Antwerp, c. 1594, by Maerten de Vos. Pen in brown ink, with brown wash, over black chalk, on laid paper. © Museum Plantin-Moretus, Antwerp #AshmoleanMuseum #Ashmolean #Museum #BruegelToRubens #PieterBruegel #Bruegel #PeterPaulRubens #Rubens #GreatFlemishDrawings #Oxford

Happy #SummerSolstice ! Stonehenge, believed to have been constructed between 3100 BC and 1600 BC, was designed to align with the sun on the summer and winter solstices. Tomorrow morning, the sun will rise at 4.46am, and its rays will stream straight into the heart of the structure – a phenomenon that people have gathered together to witness for thousands of years. Let’s hope the weather is better tomorrow than it is in this watercolour! This work is part of our Western Art Print Room collection, which spans over 500 years and 330,000 works. Donate to our Annual Appeal today, and play a part in protecting the Western Art Print Room’s invaluable collection for years to come. Learn more and donate via the link in our bio. 🪨 Stonehenge: Stormy Day, 1846, by William Turner of Oxford (1789–1862). Watercolour over graphite on paper. WA1961.39 #AshmoleanMuseum #Ashmolean #Museum #EnglishHeritage #Stonehenge #Oxford

The extraordinary and haunting drawing of The Temptation of St Anthony by Pieter Bruegel has enthralled visitors to the Ashmolean over recent months as part of Bruegel to Rubens: Great Flemish Drawings. Anthony the Great (251–356) was an Egyptian monk who spent years living in the desert as a hermit, suffering from hallucinations that had been sent by the Devil to test his faith. In Bruegel’s interpretation, St Anthony’s hallucinations are depicted as surreal demons, equal parts grotesque and comical. To the left of the composition, bumbling humans battle vainly against this apocalyptic invasion of disembodied heads, gigantic fish, and people composed of jugs. Despite these bizarre distractions, St Anthony remains undisturbed, kneeling and praying. He is even unmoved by the woman in the trunk to his left playing a lute, which can be interpreted as a sexual symbol in South Netherlandish art. In 1556, the same year this design was drawn, there was an outbreak of plague in Beveren, a hamlet on the opposite bank of the River Scheldt to Antwerp. Attempts were made to confine the epidemic to that side of the river, resulting in sweeping regulations throughout the area. The river, previously a way of life, now threatened death. It is perhaps for this reason that Bruegel chose to stage this hellish scene in a river landscape. See this design, alongside its resulting print, in our major exhibition Bruegel to Rubens: Great Flemish Drawings, closing this Sunday 23 June. This Friday, the exhibition will be open until 8pm at our evening opening, and you can enjoy food and drinks at our Rooftop Restaurant too. Plan your visit, and read more about this extraordinary artwork, via the link in our bio. ✏️ The Temptation of St Anthony, 1556, by Pieter Bruegel I. Pen in brown ink on laid paper, 21.6 x 32.6 cm. WA1863.162⁠ #AshmoleanMuseum #Ashmolean #Museum #BruegelToRubens #PieterBruegel #Bruegel #PeterPaulRubens #Rubens #GreatFlemishDrawings #Oxford

Today is #ThankATeacherDay ! This carved marble object, made in Islamabad in 1725, is a shrine to two teachers. The two pairs of feet, carved in relief into white marble, represent those of Jinadatta Suri and Jinakushala Suri, revered Jain gurus of the 12th to 14th centuries. The shrine is on display in Gallery 32 on Level 1. 👣 Shrine to the teachers Jinadatta Suri and Jinakushala Suri, 1725. EA1997.189 #AshmoleanMuseum #Ashmolean #Museum #Oxford

London-based artist @PioAbad came across a startling discovery during lockdown in 2020: his flat is located in what used to be the Grand Stores of the Royal Arsenal. In preparation for the punitive Benin expedition in February 1897, an act of retaliation to the killings of a small British delegation to the Kingdom of Benin a month earlier, the Grand Stores became the staging post for the British Army. These drawings, part of a series of 14, are a result of that discovery, where Abad contemplates the entwined history and contemporaneity of empire, and draws attention to its presence in our daily lives. The artist elaborates below. ‘I started seeing things in my flat in terms of the language of theft. Tropical plants that grow in a climate that they weren't accustomed to; ingredients in my kitchen that were products of painful histories of extraction; objects of personal significance that echo kidnapped artefacts carrying specific spiritual significance. ‘In these drawings, Benin bronzes from the British Museum are measured and arranged next to objects in my home. I want to find a non-empirical way of accounting for these stolen artefacts, tracing the narrative of dispossession according to personal and emotional dimensions. ‘The title mimics the format of museum accession codes, linking the year of the raid with my address. Home becomes the site where shared histories of loss can be contemplated.’ See Pio Abad’s ‘To Those Sitting in Darkness’, the Turner Prize-nominated Ashmolean NOW exhibition, until Sunday 8 September. ✏️ 1897.76.36.18.6, 2023, by Pio Abad. Ink and screenprint on paper. Images © Pio Abad #AshmoleanMuseum #AshmoleanNOW #Ashmolean #Museum #PioAbad #Oxford

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) is one of the best known of all Japanese woodblock print designers. A prolific artist, he is thought to have created between 4,000 and 5,000 print designs during a career that lasted almost 50 years. Although Hiroshige produced a wide range of prints, including designs of beautiful women, kabuki actors, famous historical and mythological figures and bird-and-flower studies, he is most famous for his landscape prints which capture brilliantly the effects of season, weather and time of day. This work, in which Mount Fuji is viewed through a split in the trunk of an aged cherry tree, is from Hiroshige’s final series of prints called Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. Hiroshige designed this series in large, vertical format, allowing him to demonstrate bold composition skills, in particular his fondness for balancing foreground elements with landscape backgrounds. Here he has exaggerated the size of the tree trunk in the foreground, and cropped it so that the tree extends beyond the print frame. The art of Japanese woodblock printmaking was a collaborative process between the artist, engraver, printer and publisher; although Hiroshige was the designer of prints published in his name, he was in fact just one of a team of skilled craftsmen responsible for making them. Prints like this made a strong impression on European avant-garde artists of the time, as they offered a new freedom from imitative or photographic representation. Hiroshige’s landscape prints were admired and collected by many European artists including Manet, Monet, Degas, Van Gogh and Whistler. 🗻 Koganei in Musashi Province, from the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji series, 1858, by Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858). Woodblock print, 33.8 x 22.2 cm. EAX.4381 #AshmoleanMuseum #Ashmolean #Museum #Hiroshige #JapanesePrints #Oxford

Pictured here is the iconic white hart – or male deer – painted on the outside of the Wilton Diptych. The diptych was made for King Richard II in around 1395–9, and is one of a handful of English panel paintings to have survived from the Middle Ages. The hart can be seen as a pun on Richard’s name – a ‘rich hart’ – but it would also have recalled his mother, Joan of Kent, who used the emblem of a white hind, or female deer. It also sits on a bed of rosemary, which was a badge of Richard’s first wife, Anne of Bohemia. Joan and Anne were just two in a network of powerful women whose connections Richard drew upon to bolster his own authority. A striking detail about the painting of the white hart is that, in fact, its antlers are not painted at all. Instead, the artist has rendered them by simply stippling into the gold background, producing an impressively three-dimensional and realistic effect. It’s very possible that the artist had a real white hart to study – we know that one was kept at Windsor Park. See the Wilton Diptych, on loan from the @nationalgallery as part of its 200th birthday celebrations, on display in our England Gallery until Sunday 1 September. If you’d like to learn more about the diptych, you can enjoy our free audio tour, which includes 22 stops, and both BSL and audio descriptions. There are also two Members-exclusive talks about the diptych coming up in July, which will explore themes including royal portraiture and medieval devotion. To download the audio tour, or learn more about the benefits of an Ashmolean Membership, visit the link in our bio. 🤍 The Wilton Diptych, English or French, painted about 1395–9. Egg tempera on oak, 53 × 37 cm. © The National Gallery, London⁠ #NG200 #NationalGallery #ArtHistory #NationalTreasures #NationalGallery #AshmoleanMuseum #Ashmolean #Museum #Art #History #Oxford