In March the new Proctors, Dr J.A. Black and Dr W.D. Macmillan, and the new Assessor, Dr P.A.W. Bulloch, took over from their predecessors.
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Princess Benedikta of Denmark paid an unofficial visit to the Museum and was given a tour by the Director.
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There were two events arranged for the Patrons during the year. In the autumn the Director gave a talk about a personal selection of Old Master drawings in the Print Room, and during the summer a visit was arranged to Kelmscott and to Lockinge, by courtesy of Mr C.L. Loyd, who kindly conducted our group around his collection.
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The Helen Roll Charity has once again come to the support of the Museum by generously making a donation of £6,000 towards the cost of purchasing new security equipment.
The Department of Western Art gratefully received a number of donations from benefactors who contributed towards the cost of conservation and of exhibitions which are difficult to fund from the resources of the department. Mr Martin Shopland and Mr Jacob Stodel contributed to the cost of ceramic restoration, Mr Nicholas Stogdon paid for a programme of conservation on the collection of German prints and a grant from the Villiers David Foundation paid for the repair of the portrait of Villiers David, by Augustus John, bequeathed by Mr GÄrard Schlup. A benefactor who wishes to remain anonymous contributed to the costs of the Friends' Private View of the Lear exhibition, the exhibition of the work of Valerie Thornton was made possible by a substantial contribution from Mr Michael Chase, and a grant of £500 was received from the Paul Mellon Centre towards the cost of the catalogue of the forthcoming exhibition of the work of Helen Saunders. The Ruskin exhibition, to be held in the McAlpine Gallery in 1996, has been generously sponsored by the Ruskin Foundation in association with the Maxim Group, while the costs of bringing the Prat collection of French drawings from the Louvre for exhibition in Edinburgh and Oxford in the autumn and winter of 1995 have been contributed by Eurotunnel and the Fondation Elf. A handsome donation of £12,000 from Mr Daniel Katz has been made towards the costs of the research and production of Mr Jeremy Warren's catalogue of the pre-1540 sculpture in the Department of Western Art. The department is also grateful for a donation from a benefactor who wishes to remain anonymous which paid for improving the documentation and display of the decorative arts.
The major project to provide basic conservation and mounting for the Newberry Collection of medieval Egyptian embroideries in the Department of Eastern Art is now complete. This was due to a generous donation from the Pilgrim Trust and to the continuing financial support of Mrs Marianne Ellis.
The Stockman Family Foundation has most generously promised a gift of $84,000, to be paid over three years, to underwrite the cost of employing a textile conservator in Eastern Art and to purchase specialised research and storage equipment.
Following on from the financial support of the Barakat Trust over the last few years, the University provided the necessary resources for the computerisation of the photographs of Islamic architecture held in the Creswell archive. All the images in the archive are now computerised and will soon be available on CD-ROM.
A grant from Mr David Khalili enabled the Department to employ Mr Menno Fitski to establish a computer database of the Japanese porcelain collection.
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Apart from modifications to the existing building which will result from the development, the Museum's interest in this project concerns the Cast Gallery, which should be housed in more spacious quarters, and a projected twentieth century Western Art Gallery.
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The Acceptance in Lieu procedure enabled the Department of Western Art to acquire 64 sketchbooks by Edward Ardizzone from the estate of Mrs Catherine Ardizzone, enriching the growing collection of work by twentieth-century British artists and keeping together a representative cross section of the artist's work which, without the intervention of the In Lieu system, would probably have been broken up. Two other gifts of twentieth-century works, both given to honour Michelle Sykes, were received with particular pleasure. One of these, a sketchbook by Ceri Richards, was given by the Friends of the Ashmolean, the other, a suite of ten drypoints by Ana Maria Pacheco, was given by the Education Service.
The Department of Eastern Art received a bequest of Chinese ceramics from Dr Honor Smith and donations of Indian paintings or sculptures from Sir Howard Hodgkin, Mr Simon Digby, and Mr and Mrs John Eskenazi.
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The purchase of eighty-three prints and thirty-six sketchbooks by Gertrude Hermes, the most substantial acquisition made by the Department of Western Art in 1994–5, was made possible by generous contributions from the MGC/V&A Purchase Grant Fund, the National Art Collections Fund and the Friends of the Ashmolean.
The Department of Eastern Art has continued to build up its already distinguished collection of Japanese export ceramics, and has also added to its important collection of Japanese screens, through the Jeffery Story Fund. The generosity of an anonymous benefactor has made possible the purchase of a number of outstanding metal or stone sculptures for the department's Indian and Tibetan collections. The Friends of the Ashmolean helped to fund purchases of an eleventh century Chinese silk kesi fragment and a small cup of opaque red glass from early Islamic Egypt, while Mrs Marianne Ellis generously contributed to the purchase of a fifteenth- to sixteenth-century Egyptian glass flask in its original embroidered bag.
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The activities of the conservation staff of the Department of Antiquities have been largely dictated this year by preparation for the Forecourt and Sunken Court development schemes, some long term, some short term, all involving much hard work in the movement of objects, repacking, and documenting. The new Organic Store adjacent to the Sunken Court basement has been re-racked to accommodate much extra material, largely Egyptian. Pot storage has been primarily concentrated in the North-east Basement, where fittings and facilities are being progressively upgraded. A new recording system for incoming archaeological material has also been devised in consultation with the Oxford Archaeological Unit to streamline registration. The Egyptian Inscription Store, which is to have a new door as part of the Forecourt development, has been extensively repaired and reorganised. The cleaning of the Classical sculpture and inscription collections has now been finally completed after five years of determined and highly effective effort by Kathleen Kimber.
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The major refurbishment of the Hill Music Room, made possible by grants from the Michael Marks Charitable Trust and the Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund (Wolfson Fund), has, owing to several unexpected problems, taken very much longer than anticipated, but we are confident that the work will have been completed by the end of Michaelmas Term 1995.
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The Department of Western Art arranged a series of exhibitions, most of which were centred around our own holdings. A selection of pictures from the reserve collection was especially popular. To celebrate their seventy-fifth anniversary, the Society of Wood Engravers organised an exhibition entitled `Wood Engraving Here and Now'.
The Department of Eastern Art's series of temporary exhibitions in the Eric North Room has brought to the attention of the public a large number of objects not normally displayed, as well as loan material. Of particular interest and most colourful of all was the exhibition of ikat coats from Central Asia collected in 1868–9 by Robert Shaw, the first Englishman to visit Yarkand and Kashgar. This collection formerly belonged to the old Indian Institute Museum.
Through the generosity of the Perry Foundation, the department was able to display part of the foundation's collection of Japanese nineteenth and twentieth century ceramics by the Kozan workshop. This exhibition followed its only other showing, at the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. It was accompanied by a catalogue by Kathleen Emerson-Dell, entitled `Bridging East and West; Japanese Ceramics from the Kozan studio'.
Once again the department acknowledges the generosity of Mrs Phyllis Nye in providing funds for the production of information leaflets to accompany temporary exhibitions.
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Mrs Kathleen Kimber retired on 31 July after forty-one years' service in the conservation laboratories of the Department of Antiquities, where her renowned skills in all aspects of object restoration were exercised with patient application and quiet determination far from the public eye. Then suddenly five years ago, when she emerged with her steam-cleaner to undertake the huge task of conserving the collection of Classical sculpture and inscriptions, initially in the Randolph Gallery, she became a public figure. Visitors were fascinated. She found herself immediately at the cutting edge of the Museum's public relations, dispensing information, dispelling misapprehensions and hopefully recruiting one or two youngsters to a career she has pursued so well for so long.
The award of an MBE to Mrs Anne Stevens in the New Year's Honours List acknowledges her many years of work as a dedicated volunteer during which she has built up the modern print collection. A cursory glance at the list of acquisitions in recent Annual Reports indicate the extent of her contribution. Her services will be much missed when she retires from the Museum in the autumn. The release of the post of the fourth Assistant Keepership in the Department of Western Art will bring the staff of the Department back to strength. The appointment of Mr Colin Harrison to the post will also revive interest in the collection of British eighteenth- to nineteenth century drawings and watercolours which have been somewhat neglected since the departure of Dr David Brown. The decision by the General Board to fund a new post of registrar and documentation officer in the Department of Western Art will bring welcome relief, particularly to Dr Whistler whose time has been largely tied up in recent years with the routine administration of loans. The post will also ensure that the work of documenting the collections will continue after the funding which has supported Mrs Magyar as a part-time documentation officer runs out at the end of September.
Mrs Helen Brown retired on November 30th after thirty-six years in the Coin Room. During her tenure of office, some 28,000 coins were added to the Oriental series. However, it is Helen's personal qualities, above all of kind and learned humanity, which will be missed even more than her enormous contribution to the growth of the collections. A display outlining the growth of the whole range of the Oriental collections from 1958 to 1994 has been mounted in the Coin Room exhibition area.
It was decided to allocate the vacancy left by Mrs Brown's departure to Greek coinage which, owing to the dire effects of retrenchment, had been without a specialist curator for a decade.
Dr W.L. Treadwell has assumed sole responsibility for the Islamic series, but sadly there is now no Far Eastern or Indian expertise within the department. The pain of retrenchment has now been relocated rather than remedied.
Thanks to a generous donor (Mr J. Kagan) and help from the faculty of Literae Humaniores, the Museum was able to re-appoint immediately (see Annual Report 1993–4). Mr H.S. Kim (Harvard University and Lincoln College) was elected as Assistant Keeper and University Lecturer in Greek numismatics and took up the post on 3 October.
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As this Report goes to press, four titles are in an advanced stage of production—including Ursula Aylmer's Oxford Food and a revised edition of The Treasures of the Ashmolean Museum. Publication by the University Press of Volume VI of the Catalogue of Collection of Drawings in the Ashmolean—Dr Whiteley's French Ornament Drawings of the Sixteenth Century—is also scheduled for winter 1995.
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