Holburne Museum facts for kids
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| Established | 1882 |
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| Location | Bath, Somerset |
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Listed Building – Grade I
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| Designated | 12 June 1950 |
| Reference no. | 1395305 |
The Holburne Museum (formerly known as the Holburne of Menstrie Museum and the Holburne Museum of Art) is located in Sydney Pleasure Gardens, Bath, Somerset, England. The city's first public art gallery, the Grade I listed building, is home to fine and decorative arts built around the collection of Sir William Holburne. Artists in the collection include Gainsborough, Guardi, Stubbs, Ramsay and Zoffany.
The museum also provides a programme of temporary exhibitions, music performances, creative workshops, family events, talks and lectures. There is a bookshop and a café that opens out onto Sydney Gardens. The museum reopened in May 2011 after restoration and an extension designed by Eric Parry Architects, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Collection
The heart of the present day Collection was formed by Sir Thomas William Holburne (1793-1874). As a second son, Thomas William (generally known as William) first pursued a naval career. He ultimately inherited the Baronetcy in 1820 following the death of his elder brother Francis at the Battle of Bayonne in 1814.
Details of the circumstances and pattern of Sir William's collecting are unclear, but to inherited Chinese armorial porcelain, silver and portraits he added seventeenth and eighteenth-century silver and porcelain, Italian maiolica and bronzes, Old Master paintings, portrait miniatures, books and furniture and a variety of other smaller items including Roman glass, coins, enamels, seals, gems and snuff boxes.
In 1882 Sir William's collection of over 4,000 objects, pictures and books was bequeathed to the people of Bath by his sister, Mary Anne Barbara Holburne (1802-1882). After the museum was opened the collection has continued to expand with over 2,500 further objects being acquired. In sections of the collection where the original holdings were comprehensive (maiolica, silver and gems) little has been added while under-represented sections have been supplemented, such as the original tiny group of glass that was greatly enlarged in the 1920s and 1930s by gifts from the Blathwayt family of Dyrham Park and the Holburne Society. Similarly, the scope of the oriental ceramics collection has been widened, with earlier pieces bequeathed by the collectors J Murray Elgar in 1955 and George Warre in 1938.
Significant acquisitions have greatly increased the Museum's collection of British eighteenth and early nineteenth-century paintings and miniatures. In 1955 the Museum received ten pictures from the bequest of Ernest E Cook, grandson of the travel entrepreneur Thomas Cook. These included works by Gainsborough, Stubbs and Turner. Mid-eighteenth century portraits of the Sargent family by Allan Ramsay came with the bequest of Sir Orme Sargent in 1962. With few exceptions, acquisitions were (and continue to be) required to keep with the character of the original Holburne collection to ensure its continued coherence.
The museum also owns portraits by modern artists such as David Fisher, who won the Museum's 2008 competition for a commissioned portrait.
Building and gardens
Since 1916 the Museum has been housed in the former Sydney Hotel at the end of Great Pulteney Street. The original design for the Hotel, prepared by Thomas Baldwin in 1794, was a two-storey building which would serve the pleasure gardens, known as Sydney Gardens, laid out by Baldwin beyond. The gardens remain the only remaining eighteenth-century pleasure gardens (or Vauxhall) in the country.
After Baldwin was bankrupted his design for the hotel was not implemented. Instead a three-storey building was designed by Charles Harcourt Masters. The foundation stone was laid in 1796 and the building was ready by 1799. Visitors entered the gardens through the Hotel. Projecting from the rear of the building at first floor level was a conservatory and a semi-circular Orchestra with a wide covered loggia below. Two semi-circular rows of supper boxes projected from the sides of the building. The gardens were used daily for promenades and public breakfasts. At public breakfasts tea, coffee, rolls and Sally Lunn buns were served at about midday, followed by dancing. There were generally three evening galas each summer, usually on the birthdays of George III and the Prince of Wales, and in July to coincide with the Bath races. During these galas the gardens were lit with thousands of lamps and the guests took supper accompanied by music and fireworks. Breakfasts, coffee-drinking, newspaper-reading and card-playing took place in the ground floor of the Hotel and dancing in a ballroom on the first floor. All the rooms could be hired for private parties and meetings.
In 1836 the Hotel was changed into a private lodging house and an extra storey of bedrooms added. The two watchmen's boxes outside the museum were added around 1840.
Academic partnerships
For a relatively short period, the building housed Sydney College, a school set up to rival Clifton College for its education standards. Primarily aimed at those who could afford to board their sons, the school had some success and produced a number of notable alumni. Sydney College provided the opposition to Clifton College in the latter's first ever rugby match in 1872.
The Holburne’s role as a University Museum was established in 1973 through its association with the University of Bath. though it has also engaged in collaboration with nearby University of Bristol. In 2013 the Holburne Museum and Bath Spa University announced a new partnership to promote their academic and cultural collaboration.
Impact of COVID-19
Because of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic the museum closed on 18 March 2020. All but five of the museum's 25 staff have been furloughed. As the museum has only a few weeks of funds they turned to crowdfunding and by 19 April 2020 had raised £23000 out of £50000 that they hoped to raise. The museum also will look into Arts Council funding as well as donations from past donors and patrons.
Images for kids
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The Holburne Museum viewed from Sydney Road
