Oxford University Museum of Natural History#Collections

File:Dinosaurs on display at the natural history museum.jpg Gallery of the museum before renovation in 2023–24]]

The university's Honour School of Natural Science started in 1850, but the facilities for teaching were scattered around the city of Oxford in the various colleges. The university's collection of anatomical and natural history specimens were similarly spread around the city. Regius Professor of Medicine, Sir Henry Acland, initiated the construction of the museum between 1855 and 1860, to bring together all the aspects of science around a central display area. The building was officially opened in 1860, although various departments had occupied their premises from as early as 1858. In 1858, Acland gave a lecture on the museum, setting forth the reason for the building's construction. He viewed that the university had been one-sided in the forms of study it offered—chiefly theology, philosophy, the classics and history—and that the opportunity should be offered to learn of the natural world and obtain the "knowledge of the great material design of which the Supreme Master-Worker has made us a constituent part". This idea, of Nature as the Second Book of God, was common in the 19th century.Yanni, Carla. Nature's Museums: Victorian Science and the Architecture of Display, Chapter two, passim.

The largest portion of the museum's collections consist of the natural history specimens from the Ashmolean Museum, including the specimens collected by John Tradescant the elder and his son of the same name, William Burchell and geologist William Buckland. The Christ Church Museum donated its osteological and physiological specimens, many of which were collected by Acland. The construction of the building was accomplished through money earned from the sale of Bibles.{{cite web|last=Taunton|first=Larry|title=The atheist who tried to steal Christmas|url=http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/story/2011-12-26/dawkins-atheism-christmas-meaning/52230682/1|work=USA Today|date=26 December 2012|access-date=2 January 2013}} Several departments moved within the building—astronomy, geometry, experimental physics, mineralogy, chemistry, geology, zoology, anatomy, physiology and medicine. As the departments grew in size over the years, they moved to new locations along South Parks Road, which remains the home of the university's Science Area.{{citation needed|date=March 2021}}

The last department to leave the building was the entomology department, which moved into the zoology building in 1978. However, there is still a working entomology laboratory on the first floor of the museum building. Between 1885 and 1886 a new building to the east of the museum was constructed to house the ethnological collections of General Augustus Pitt Rivers—the Pitt Rivers Museum. In 19th-century thinking, it was very important to separate objects made by the hand of God (natural history) from objects made by the hand of man (anthropology).Yanni, chapter two, passim

The museum was renovated and the layout changed between 2023 and 2024.

File:Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Oxford, UK - Diliff.jpg

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File:Interior Oxford University Museum of Natural History.jpg

The neo-Gothic building was designed by the Irish architects Thomas Newenham Deane and Benjamin Woodward, mostly Woodward. The museum's design was directly influenced by the writings of critic John Ruskin, who involved himself by making various suggestions to Woodward during construction. Construction by Lucas Brothers began in 1855, and the building was ready for occupancy in 1860.{{Cite web|url=https://web.prm.ox.ac.uk/sma/index.php/articles/article-index/383-introduction-to-the-oxford-university-museum.html|title=Oxford University Museum of Natural History: Introduction|publisher=Oxford University|access-date=21 October 2021}}

The adjoining building that houses the Pitt Rivers Museum was the work of Thomas Manly Deane, son of Thomas Newenham Deane. It was built between 1885 and 1886.{{citation needed|date=March 2021}}

The museum consists of a large square court with a glass roof, supported by cast iron pillars, which divide the court into three aisles. Cloistered arcades run around the ground and first floor of the building, with stone columns each made from a different British stone, selected by geologist John Phillips (the Keeper of the Museum). The ornamentation of the stonework and iron pillars incorporates natural forms such as leaves and branches, combining the Pre-Raphaelite style with the scientific role of the building.{{citation needed|date=March 2021}}

Statues of eminent men of science stand around the ground floor of the court—from Aristotle and Bacon through to Darwin and Linnaeus. Although the university paid for the construction of the building, the ornamentation was funded by public subscription, and much of it remains incomplete. The Irish stone carvers O'Shea and Whelan had been employed to create lively freehand carvings in the Gothic manner. When funding dried up, they offered to work unpaid, but they were accused by members of the University Convocation of "defacing" the building by adding unauthorised work. According to Acland, the O'Shea brothers responded by caricaturing the members of Convocation as parrots and owls in the carving over the building's entrance. Acland insists that he forced them to remove the heads from these carvings.Acland, Henry W., M.D. The Oxford Museum. London: George Allen, 1893.

On 12 January 1954 both the Natural History and Pitt Rivers museums were Grade I listed as being "one of the most significant and carefully detailed museum complexes of the mid-late C19, as well as being a seminal monument to Oxford's scientific awakening."{{Cite web |title=the University Museum and Pitt Rivers Museum, Non Civil Parish - 1081534 {{!}} Historic England |url=https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1081534 |access-date=2022-08-04 |website=historicengland.org.uk |language=en}}

{{main|1860 Oxford evolution debate}}

A significant debate in the history of evolutionary biology took place in the museum in 1860 at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.Account of the 1860 debate, American Scientist. Representatives of the Church and science debated the subject of evolution, and the event is often viewed as symbolising the defeat of a literalist interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative. However, there are few eye-witness accounts of the debate, and most accounts of the debate were written by scientists.

{{cite book|author=Ian Hesketh|title=Of Apes and Ancestors: Evolution, Christianity, and the Oxford Debate|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4E_EbablheEC|access-date=21 January 2013|date=3 October 2009|publisher=University of Toronto Press|isbn=978-0-8020-9284-7}}{{cite book|author=Charles Darwin|title=The Power of Movement in Plants|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=17Ch7Rh6w-QC&pg=PT549|access-date=21 January 2013|date=15 December 2009|publisher=MobileReference|isbn=978-1-60501-636-8|pages=549–}}

File:HuxleyVanityFair.jpg of Thomas Huxley from Vanity Fair]]

The biologist Thomas Huxley and Samuel Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford, are generally cast as the main protagonists in the debate. Huxley was a keen scientist and a staunch supporter of Darwin's theories. Wilberforce had supported the construction of the museum as the centre for the science departments, for the study of the wonders of God's creations.{{citation needed|date=March 2021}}

On the Wednesday of the meeting, 27 June 1860, botanist Charles Daubeny presented a paper on plant sexuality, which made reference to Darwin's theory of natural selection. Richard Owen, a zoologist who believed that evolution was governed by divine influence, criticised the theory pointing out that the brain of the gorilla was more different from that of man than that of other primates. Huxley stated that he would respond to this comment in print, and declined to continue the debate. However, rumours began to spread that the Bishop of Oxford would be attending the conference on the following Saturday.{{citation needed|date=March 2021}}

Initially, Huxley was planning to avoid the bishop's speech. However, evolutionist Robert Chambers convinced him to stay.{{citation needed|date=March 2021}}

Wilberforce's speech on 30 June 1860 was good-humoured and witty, but was an unfair attack on Darwinism, ending in the now infamous question to Huxley of whether "it was through his grandfather or grandmother that he claimed descent from a monkey." Some commentators suggested that this question was written by Owen, and others suggested that the bishop was taught by Owen. (Owen and Wilberforce had known each other since childhood.){{citation needed|date=March 2021}}

Wilberforce is purported to have turned to his neighbour, chemist Professor Brodie and exclaiming, "The Lord has delivered him into mine hands." When Huxley spoke, he responded that he had heard nothing from Wilberforce to prejudice Darwin's arguments, which still provided the best explanation of the origin of species yet advanced. He ended with the equally famous response to Wilberforce's question, that he had "no need to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather, but that he would be ashamed of having for an ancestor a man of restless and versatile interest who distracts the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digression and skilled appeals to religious prejudice."{{citation needed|date=March 2021}}

However it seems unlikely that the debate was as spectacular as traditionally suggested – contemporary accounts by journalists do not make mention of the words that have become such notable quotations. Additionally, contemporary accounts suggest that it was not Huxley, but Sir Joseph Hooker who most vocally defended Darwinism at the meeting.{{citation needed|date=March 2021}}

While all the accounts of the event suggest that the supporters of Darwinism were the most persuasive, it seems likely that the exact nature of the debate was made more sensational in the reports of Huxley's supporters to encourage further support for Darwin's theories.J. R. Lucas, "Wilberforce and Huxley: A Legendary Encounter" http://users.ox.ac.uk/~jrlucas/legend.html retrieved 5 October 2007

The first public demonstration of wireless telegraphy took place in the lecture theatre of the museum on 14 August 1894, carried out by Professor Oliver Lodge. A radio signal was sent from the neighbouring Clarendon Laboratory building, and received by apparatus in the lecture theatre.{{citation needed|date=March 2021}}

The museum displays a 1651 painting of a dodo by Flemish artist, Jan Savery.{{citation needed|date=March 2021}} Charles Dodgson, better known by his pen-name Lewis Carroll, was a regular visitor to the museum, and Savery's painting is likely to have influenced the character of the Dodo in Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.{{citation needed|date=March 2021}}

File:First day of the Oxford Palestine solidarity encampment (6 May 2024) 17.jpg

{{Main|2024 University of Oxford pro-Palestinian campus occupations}}

On the 6 May 2024 a Palestinian solidarity encampment was erected on the front lawn of the museum. This began the 2024 University of Oxford pro-Palestinian campus occupations.{{Cite news |last=Hall |first=Rachel |last2=Gohil |first2=Neha |date=2024-05-06 |title=Students stage pro-Palestine occupations at five more UK universities |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/06/students-stage-pro-palestine-occupations-at-five-more-uk-universities |access-date=2024-05-24 |work=The Guardian |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}}

The museum collections are divided into three sections: Earth Collections covering the Palaeontological collections and the mineral and rock collections, Life Collections which include zoological and entomological collections, and the Archive Collections.

The Hope Entomological Collections, numbering over five million specimens are held by the museum. The Hope Department was founded by Frederick William Hope and the first appointed curator of the collections was John Obadiah Westwood. Many important insect and arachnid specimens from various collectors and collections make up the museums holdings including (but not limited to) those of Octavius Pickard-Cambridge, George Henry Verrall, Pierre François Marie Auguste Dejean, Pierre André Latreille, Alfred Russel Wallace, Charles Darwin, Jacques Marie Frangile Bigot, and Pierre Justin Marie Macquart among others.{{citation needed|date=March 2021}}

File:The Oxford University Museum of Natural History, foregrounded by the 'Ghost Forest' installation (Angela Palmer), March 2011.JPG

The museum is led by a director ({{As of|2023|lc=y}} Professor Paul Smith, formerly Head of the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham),{{cite web | title=Professor Paul Smith | website=Oxford University Museum of Natural History | url=https://www.oumnh.ox.ac.uk/people/paul-smith | access-date=26 September 2023}} who succeeded Professor Jim Kennedy{{Cite web|url=http://www.earth.ox.ac.uk/people/profiles/academic/jimk|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081208062457/http://www.earth.ox.ac.uk/people/profiles/academic/jimk|url-status=dead|archive-date=2008-12-08|title=jimk - Department of Earth Sciences at Oxford University|date=2008-12-08|access-date=2019-04-28}} in 2011, and there are front of house, education, outreach, IT, library, conservation, and technical staff.

Since 1997 the museum has benefited from external funding, from government and private sources, and undertaken a renewal of its displays. As well as central exhibits featuring the dodo and dinosaurs, there are sets of displays with contemporary designs but within restored Victorian cabinets, on a variety of themes: Evolution, Primates, the History of Life, Vertebrates, Invertebrates and Rocks and Minerals. There are also a number of popular touchable items, which include two bears, a fox, and other taxidermy. Additionally, there is a meteorite and large fossils and minerals. Visitors can also see large dinosaur reconstructions and a parade of mammal skeletons.{{citation needed|date=March 2021}}

File:Megalosaur footprints.JPG

A famous group of ichnites (fossilised footprints) was found in a limestone quarry at Ardley, 20 km northeast of Oxford, in 1997. They were thought to have been made by Megalosaurus and possibly Cetiosaurus. There are replicas of some of these footprints, set across the front lawn of the museum.{{citation needed|date=March 2021}}

The tower of the museum is a popular nesting area for migrating swifts. Cameras have been installed which broadcast a live stream to a display near the main entrance.{{Cite web|url=https://oumnh.ox.ac.uk/learn-swifts-in-the-tower|title=Swifts in the tower|website=Oxford University Museum of Natural History|language=en|access-date=2022-05-26}}

On March 17, 2020, the museum shut indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.{{Cite web|url=https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/18311192.oxfords-ashmolean-pitt-rivers-natural-history-museums-shut-coronovirus/|title=Ashmolean, Pitt Rivers and other museums SHUT over coronavirus|website=Oxford Mail|first=Tim|last= Hughes|date=2020-03-17}} It reopened with some restrictions on September 22, 2020.{{Cite press release|url=https://oumnh.ox.ac.uk/museum-of-natural-history-and-pitt-rivers-museum-to-reopen-on-22-september-2020|title=Museum of Natural History and Pitt Rivers Museum to reopen on 22 September 2020|website=Oxford University Museum of Natural History|date=7 September 2020}}

The Sequoiadendron giganteum tree in front of the museum was 35.7m tall in 2006.{{cite web | url=http://www.redwoodworld.co.uk/picturepages/oxford2.htm | title=Redwood World: Oxford - University Museum (Oxfordshire) }} As "the tallest object in central Oxford", in 2024 the tree was fitted with a lightning rod to help protect it in the event of a lightning strike.{{Cite web |title=University Parks gardeners restore Museum lawn |url=https://estates.admin.ox.ac.uk/article/university-parks-gardeners-restore-museum-lawn |access-date=2025-02-18 |website=estates.admin.ox.ac.uk |language=en}}

The Museum has been featured in several movies, television shows and documentaries.

Several scenes for the 2004 Animal Planet Docufiction film The Last Dragon (known in the United States as Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real) were filmed at the Oxford museum{{citation needed|date=November 2023}}.

Various scenes were filmed around Oxford for the 2017 blockbuster science fiction Action sequel Transformers: The Last Knight, one scene where Viviane Wembly is giving a tour to a group of students featuring Laura Haddock and Anthony Hopkins was shot in the university and museum.{{cite web|url= https://www.sceen-it.com/sceen/3073/Transformers-The-Last-Knight/Oxford-University-Museum-of-Natural-History |title= Transformers: The Last Knight at Oxford University Museum of Natural History - filming location |access-date=November 19, 2023}}

Scenes were shot at the museum for the BBC One and HBO fantasy drama His Dark Materials.{{cite news|url= https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-64013809 |title= His Dark Materials exhibition opens in Oxford |work= BBC News |date= 19 December 2022 |access-date=November 19, 2023}}

A deleted scene for the Marvel Superhero film Eternals featuring Kit Harington and Lia McHugh was filmed at the museum.{{cite news|url= https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/19839530.deleted-scene-marvel-eternals-filmed-oxford-museum/|title= Deleted scene from Marvel Eternals filmed in Oxford museum |newspaper=The Oxford Mail|last=Prosser |first=Eirian |access-date=November 19, 2023}}

• The Abbot's Kitchen, an early chemistry laboratory next to the museum, built at the same time
• Radcliffe Science Library, the science library of Oxford University, close to the museum
• Museum of Oxford, dedicated to the history of the city of Oxford

{{reflist}}

{{Commons category|Oxford University Museum of Natural History}}

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20110427222610/http://www.oum.ox.ac.uk/collect/Smith_1986_Appendix_B.pdf History of the Insect collections] (PDF copy; archived)
• [http://www.round.me/tour/952/view Virtual Tour of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History 2014]

{{Museums and galleries in Oxfordshire}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Oxford University Museum Of Natural History}}

Category:Grade I listed buildings in Oxford

Category:Grade I listed museum buildings

Natural History

Category:Natural history museums in England

Category:Gothic Revival architecture in Oxfordshire

Category:1850 establishments in England

Category:Geology museums in England

Category:Dinosaur museums in the United Kingdom

Category:Paleontology in the United Kingdom

Category:Museums established in 1850