03 Sep 07

Oxford University museums scooped nearly nine per cent of the total annual award to UK museums by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)/Wolfson Foundation Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund.

The Ashmolean, the Pitt Rivers and the Museum of Natural History will together receive £348,000 out of this year's £4m award.

Ashmolean Museum

The Ashmolean Museum has been awarded £165,000 to refurbish its Cast Gallery, one of the oldest, largest and best preserved collections of Greek and Roman sculpture in the UK, with 9,000 casts, including Venus di Milo and Nike of Samothrace.

The collection will be placed in a modern display that will be more accessible, stimulating and better integrated with the rest of the Museum. Grand wall reliefs, such as of the Arch of Trajan will be displayed across a new concourse. There will be a display of striking gods and heroes such as Apollo Belvedere on the ground floor of the gallery, and in the basement there will be a dense display of casts resembling a Classical temple.

The Gallery, which is overdue for refurbishment will also be re-decorated and relit and there will be a link to the rest of the re-developed Ashmolean via the new 'Rome and the east' gallery.

Commenting on the award, Dr Christopher Brown, Director of the Ashmolean Museum, said: 'My colleagues I are delighted to receive this grant from the DCMS/Wolfson Foundation. The Cast Gallery holds one of the great Ashmolean collections and this generous grant will enable us to display the collection in a setting that will do it justice.'

Pitt Rivers Museum

The Pitt Rivers Museum has been awarded £128,000 in support of the re-development of its entrance. The money will be used to purchase custom-made museum cases with environmental controls and internal lighting, in which the Museum will display a range of items previously kept in store. These form part of a broader re-development which will restore the spectacular view of the totem pole.

Oxford University Museum of Natural History

The Oxford University Museum of Natural History has been awarded £55,000, which, with a matching £50,000 from Waste Recycling Environmental Ltd, will allow the museum to extend its current display refurbishment programme. New displays on the geology of the Oxford region will be installed in a run of cases on the upper east gallery. They will include rocks and fossils, information on building stones, and thumbnail biographical sketches of the Oxford geologists who unravelled the 200-million-year history of Oxfordshire.