Yorkshire Museum
The Yorkshire Museum is a museum in York, England. It was opened in 1830, and has five permanent collections, covering biology, geology, archaeology, numismatics and astronomy.
History
The museum was founded by the Yorkshire Philosophical Society to accommodate their geological and archaeological collections, and was originally housed in Ousegate, York, until the site became too small. In 1828, the society received by royal grant, of land formerly belonging to St Mary's Abbey for the purposes of building a new museum. The main building of the museum is called the Yorkshire Museum; it was designed by William Wilkins in a Greek Revival style and is a Grade I listed building. It was officially opened in February 1830, which makes it one of the longest established museums in England. A condition of the royal grant was that the land surrounding the museum building should be a botanic gardens and one was created in the 1830s. The botanic gardens are now known as the Museum Gardens. On 26 September 1831, the inaugural meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science was held at the Yorkshire Museum.The Tempest Anderson Hall was built in 1912, as an annex to the museum, and is an early example of a reinforced concrete building. It is used as a conference venue and lecture theatre.
The Royal Archaeological Institute held its summer meeting of 1934 at the museum where it hosted the archaeological congress from 7 July to 17 July.
The museum was narrowly missed by a bomb during the Baedeker Blitz on 29 April 1942, though the explosion caused damage to the roof and the windows. The curator, Reginald Wagstaffe, lived in Manor Cottage and was responsible for the subsequent clean-up effort of the debris, during which 'seven large bath-tubs' of broken glass and geological specimens were thrown away.
In light of financial issues from 1956 onwards, the YPS transferred the Yorkshire Museum and Museum Gardens to 'the citizens of York' on 2 January 1961. A plaque on the front of the Yorkshire Museum records this event. The York Corporation operated the museum from 1961 to 1974 when municipal boundary changes resulted in the creation of North Yorkshire County Council, to whom the museum transferred. It was returned to the City of York Council in 1996. The City of York Council set up the York Museums Trust in 2002, to manage the York Castle Museum, York Art Gallery, the Yorkshire Museum and the Museum Gardens.
The museum closed in November 2009 for a major refurbishment and reopened on Yorkshire Day on 1 August 2010. The £2 million scheme was largely carried out by the museum's own staff, who restructured and redecorated the interior of the building.
the museum has the following permanent exhibits: "Roman York – Meet the People of the Empire", "Medieval York: Capital of the North", "Yorkshire's Jurassic World", "After the Ice: Yorkshire's Prehistoric People", and "William Smith: The Map That Changed The World", referring to the world's first full geological map of a country.
During the COVID-19 pandemic the museum, along with the other York Museums Trust sites, closed to the public on 23 March 2020. The museum remained closed a year later, but on 28 March 2021 it announced that it had received a £18,000 'Lifeline grant' from the Culture Recovery Fund for repairs to the building façade and roof. On 7 May 2021 it announced its reopening on 9 July 2021 with an exhibition featuring a celebrated portrait of King Richard III from the National Portrait Gallery. This exhibition, and the site, closed on 31 October 2021 for the winter period in order to save resources and undertake building repairs. In February it announced that it would reopen on 8 April 2022 with a new exhibition featuring the Ryedale Roman Hoard.
Keepers and curators
The museum has had many keepers, curators and honorary curators over its lifetime. The first keeper was John Phillips.Collections
The four permanent collections at the museum all have English designated collection status, which means they are "pre-eminent collections of national and international importance". The collection began in the 1820s, with the collection of animal bones and fossils from Kirkdale Cave in North Yorkshire.Biology
The biology collection contains 200,000 specimens, including both fauna and flora, with the majority of the collection made up of insects. There are two specimens of the extinct great auk, an almost complete skeleton of an extinct moa, passenger pigeons, and a large collection of Quaternary specimens from the Yorkshire region including the remains of elephants, cave bears and hyena from Kirkdale Cave. In 1866–7, the museum was one of the three recipients of Dodo bones discovered by Harry Higginson.Geology
The geology collection contains over 112,500 specimens of rocks, minerals and fossils. Fossils make up the majority of the collection numbering over 100,000 samples, and include important specimens from the Carboniferous, Mesozoic and Tertiary periods.Astronomy
The astronomy collection is mainly kept in the observatory in the museum gardens with some telescopes kept at the Castle Museum in York. The observatory is staffed by volunteers.Archaeology
The archaeology collection has close to a million objects that date from around 500,000 BC to the 20th century. Most of the objects from the Roman, Anglo-Scandinavian and medieval periods are from the York and Yorkshire area.Notable collections
Geological
- The Middlesbrough meteorite.
- Alan the Dinosaur.
Prehistoric
- The Star Carr Pendant, the oldest Mesolithic art in Britain.
- Some of the Star Carr Frontlets, a collection of Mesolithic red deer headdresses.
- The York Hoard of Neolithic flint tools.
- The Towton torcs, a pair of gold Iron Age torcs.
- The museum houses some collections of forged prehistoric tools by the Yorkshire forger Flint Jack.
Roman
- The Melsonby Hoard, a hoard of items from the Iron Age.
- The Wold Newton hoard, a hoard of 1,857 coins dating from the early 4th century AD.
- The Head of Constantine the Great, a fragment of a marble statue of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great.
- The Statue of Mars, a 4th-century sculpture of the Roman god Mars.
- The Heslington Hoard, a hoard of 2,800 coins dating from the mid 4th century AD.
- The Ivory Bangle Lady, a 4th-century skeleton of a woman.
- The Overton Hoard of silver denarii from the early 3rd century.
- The Knaresborough Hoard of copper alloy vessels from the 4th century.
- The Ryedale Hoard, Roman copper artifacts from the 2nd century.
Early Medieval
- The Coppergate Helmet, an 8th-century helmet found in York.
- The Ormside Bowl, a silver-gilt bowl from Cumbria.
- A portion of the St Leonard's Place hoard of ninth-century Northumbrian pennies.
- The Bedale Hoard, a hoard of Viking silver jewellery and an Anglo-Saxon sword.
- The Escrick ring, an Anglo-Saxon gold and sapphire finger ring.
- The Gilling sword, a late Anglo-Saxon sword found in a river.
- The Vale of York hoard, a 10th-century niello silver-gilt vessel containing coins and jewellery.
Medieval
- The Middleham Jewel, a gold, diamond-shaped pendant set with a sapphire and engraved with a picture of the Christian Trinity on the front, and one of the Nativity of Jesus on the back.
- The Cawood sword.
- The Ryther Hoard.
- The Bootham Hoard.
- The Medieval shrines of Saint William of York.
- A gilt-enamel figurine depicting Christ, produced in Limoges enamel, which was discovered in 1826 and subsequently lost, was purchased by the museum in 2019. It first went on public display on 20 September 2019.
Events
A monthly lecture series by the Yorkshire Philosophical Society is held in the museum's lecture theatre.
Roman Festival
The museum and the Museum Gardens first hosted the Eboracum Roman Festival in 2016. It has since become an annual event.Curator battle
During the COVID-19 pandemic the museum was closed. It hosted a series of weekly competitions on social media to engage with other museums in order to find the best object of a given topic, titled the 'Curator battle'. Themes included searches to find the 'creepiest object' and the 'sassiest object' in museum collections worldwide. The 'creepiest object' category was featured in an episode of Have I Got News For You. The museum won a PRCA 'Just Marketing Award' in January 2021 for the '#CuratorBattle' twitter campaign in the category of 'Best performance during COVID-19'. Analysis by York Museums Trust of this social event concluded that more than 6.2 million people saw YMT collections online due to the campaign.Exhibitions
The museum has hosted many exhibitions since its inception.1950s
In 1954 temporary exhibitions were held on photographs of the royal tombs at Westminster and York silver.1970s
The 1976 exhibition "The Viking Kingdom of York" was seen by over 78,000 visitors.1980s
The Coppergate helmet was first put onto display in a permanent gallery space in 1980 following a £30,000 grant from the British Museum as part of the "International Viking Exhibition".A third successful Viking exhibition, "The Vikings in England" was opened by the Prince of Wales on 30 March 1982 and was seen by over 235,000 visitors before it closed in October of the same year. This exhibition was awarded the European Museum of the Year Special Exhibition Award as a result of the presentation of the exhibition in the museum and for additional educational projects organised by the then Keeper Elizabeth Hartley.
The 1984 exhibition "A New Look at the Dinosaurs" was opened by David Bellamy and was seen by over 320,000 visitors. It was described in a review in New Scientist as "the best thing on dinosaurs you are ever likely to see".
The 1985 exhibition "Disappearing Forest Wildlife" was opened on 22 May 1985, again by David Bellamy. It featured a replica jungle setting and a vivarium containing live spiders, snakes and scorpions.