in 1884 the Patent Museum was handed over to the department.
Books, prints, MSS. and drawings were bequeathed by the Rev.
A. Dyce and Mr John Forster. Meanwhile, gifts and purchases
had combined to, make the collection one of the most important
in Europe. The chief features may be summarized as consisting
of pictures, including the Raphael cartoons lent by the king;
textiles, silks and tapestry; ceramics and enamels, ivory and
plastic art, metal, furniture and Oriental collections. The
guiding principle of the museum is the illustration of art applied
to industry. Beauty and decorative attraction is perhaps the
chief characteristic of the exhibits here, whereas the British
Museum is largely archaeological. With this object in view,
the museum possesses numerous reproductions of famous
art treasures: casts, facsimiles and electrotypes, some of
them so well contrived as to be almost indistinguishable
from the originals. An art library with 75,000 volumes
and 25,000 prints and photographs is at the disposal of
students, and an art school is also attached to the museum.
The museum does considerable work among provincial schools
of art and museums, “circulation” being its function in
this connexion. Works of art are sent on temporary loan to
local museums, where they are exhibited for certain periods
and on being withdrawn are replaced by fresh examples; The
subordinate museum of the Board of Education at Bethnal
Green and that at Edinburgh call for no comment, their contents
being of slender value. The Dublin Museum, though now
controlled by the Irish Department, may be mentioned here as
having been founded and worked by the Board of Education.
Apart from the fact that it is one of the most suitably housed
and organized museums in the British Isles, it is remarkable for
its priceless collection of Celtic antiquities, belonging to the
Royal Irish Academy, and transferred to the Kildare Street
Museum in 1890. Among its most famous specimens of early
Irish art may be mentioned the shrine and bell of St Patrick,
the Tara brooch, the cross of Cong and the Ardagh chalice. The
series of bronze and stone implements is most perfect, while
the jewels, gold ornaments, torques, fibulae, diadems, and so
forth are such that, were it possible again to extend the galleries
(thus allowing further classification and exhibition space), the
collection would surpass the Danish National Museum at
Copenhagen, its chief rival in Europe.
The famous collections of Sir Richard Wallace (d. 1890) having
been bequeathed to the British nation by his widow, the public
has acquired a magnificent gallery of pictures,
together with a quantity of works of art, so important
as to make it necessary to include Hertford House
among national museums. French art predominates,Other National
and Quasi-National Museums.
and the examples of bronze, furniture, and porcelain
are as fine as those to be seen in the Louvre. Hertford House,
however, also contains a most remarkable collection of armour,
and the examples of Italian faience, enamels, bijouterie, &c.,
are of first-rate interest. The universities of Cambridge and
Oxford have museums, the latter including the Ashmolean collections,
a valuable bequest of majolica from D. Fortnum, and some
important classical statuary, now in the Taylorian Gallery.
Christ Church has a small museum and picture gallery. Trinity
College, Dublin, has a miniature archaeological collection,
containing some fine examples of early Irish art. The National
Museum of Antiquities of Scotland, controlled by the Board of
Manufactures, was formed by the Scottish Society of Antiquaries,
and has a comprehensive collection of Scottish objects, lay and
religious. The Tower of London contains armour of historic
and artistic interest, and the Royal College of Music has an
invaluable collection of musical instruments, presented by Mr George
Donaldson. Art museums are also to be found in several
public schools in the United Kingdom.
The Museums Act of 1845 enabled town councils to found and maintain museums. This act was superseded by another passed in 1850, by Mr William Ewart, which in its turn has been replaced by amending statutes passed in 1855, 1866, 1868 and 1885. The Museums and Gymnasiums Act of 1891 sanctioned the provision and maintenance ofMunicipal Museums. museums for the reception of local antiquities and other objects of interest, and allows a 12d. rate, irrespective of other acts. Boroughs have also the right to levy special rates under private municipal acts, Oldham affording a case in point. Civic museums must still be considered to be in their infancy. Although the movement is now firmly established in municipal enterprise, the collections, taken as a whole, are still somewhat nondescript. In many cases collections have been handed over by local societies, particularly in geology, zoology and other scientific departments. There are about twelve museums in which Roman antiquities are noticeable, among them being Leicester, and the Civic Museum of London, at the Guildhall. British and Anglo-Saxon relics are important features at Sheffield and Liverpool; in the former case owing to the Bateman collection acquired in 1876; while the Mayer collection presented to the latter city contains a highly important series of carved ivories. At Salford, Glasgow and Manchester industrial art is the chief feature of the collections. Birmingham, with perhaps the finest provincial collection of industrial art, is supported by the rates to the extent of £4200 a year. Its collections (including here, as in the majority of great towns, an important gallery of paintings) are entirely derived from gifts and bequests. Birmingham has made a reputation for special exhibitions of Works of art lent for a time to the corporation. These loan exhibitions, about which occasional lectures are given, and of which cheap illustrated catalogues are issued, have largely contributed to the great popularity and efficiency of the museum. Liverpool, Preston, Derby and Sheffield owe their fine museum buildings to private generosity. Other towns have museums which are chiefly supported by subscriptions, e.g. Chester and Newcastle, where there is a fine collection of work by Bewick the engraver. At Exeter the library, museum, and art gallery, together with schools of science and art, are combined in one building. Other towns may be noted as having art museums: Stockport, Nottingham (Wedgwood collection), Leeds, Bootle, Swansea, Bradford, Northampton (British archaeology), and Windsor. There are museums at Belfast, Larne, Kilkenny and Armagh. The cost of the civic museum, being generally computed with the maintenance of the free library, is not easily obtained. In many cases the librarian is also curator of the museum; elsewhere no curator at all is appointed, his work being done by a caretaker. In some museums there is no classification or cataloguing and the value of existing collections is impaired both by careless treatment and by the too ready acceptance of worthless gifts; often enough the museums are governed by committees of the corporation whose interest and experience are not great.
Foreign Museums.—Art museums are far more numerous on the continent of Europe than in England. In Germany progress has been very striking, their educational aspect being closely studied. In Italy public collections, which are ten times more numerous than in England, are chiefly regarded as financial assets. The best examples of classification are to be found abroad, at Vienna, Amsterdam, Zürich, Munich and Gizeh in Egypt. The Musée Carnavalet, the historical collection of the city of Paris, is the most perfect civic museum in the world. The buildings in which the objects can be most easily studied are those of Naples, Berlin and Vienna. The value of the aggregate collections in any single country of the great powers, Russia excepted, probably exceeds the value of British collections. At the same time, it must be remembered that masses of foreign collections represent expropriations by the city and the state, together with the inheritance of royal and semi-royal collectors. In Germany and Italy, for instance, there are at least a dozen towns which at one time were capitals of principalities. In some countries the public holds over works of art the pre-emptive right of purchase. In Italy, under the law known as the Editto Pacca, it is illegal to export the more famous works of art. Speaking generally, the cost of maintaining municipal museums abroad is very small, many being without expert or highly-paid, officials, while admission fees are often considerable. Nowhere in the United Kingdom are the collections neglected in a manner
