Good morning, and welcome to the museum – one with a remarkable range of exhibits, which I’m sure you’ll enjoy. My name’s Greg, and I’ll tell you about the various collections as we go round. But before we go, let me just give you a taste of what we have here.
Well, for one thing, we have a fine collection of twentieth and twenty-first century paintings, many by very well-known artists. I’m sure you’ll recognise several of the paintings. This is the gallery that attracts the largest number of visitors, so it’s best to go in early in the day, before the crowds arrive.
The there are the nineteenth-century paintings. The museum was opened in the middle of that century, and several of the artists each donated one work – to get the museum started, as it were. So they’re of special interest to us – we feel closer to them than to other works.
The sculpture gallery has a number of fine exhibits, but I’m afraid it’s currently closed for refurbishment. You’ll need to come back next year to see it properly, but a number of the sculptures have been moved to other parts of the museum.
‘Around the world’ is a temporary exhibition – you’ve probably seen something about it on TV or in the newspapers. It’s created a great deal of interest, because it presents objects from every continent and many countries, and provides information about their social context – why they were made, who for, and so on.
Then there’s the collection of coins. This is what you might call a focused, specialist collection, because all the coins come from this country, and were produced between two thousand and a thousand years ago. And many of them were discovered by ordinary people digging their gardens and donated to the museum!
All our porcelain and glass we left to the museum by its founder, when he died in 1878. And in the terms of his will, we’re not allowed to add anything to that collection: he believed it was perfect in itself, and we don’t see any reason to disagree!
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It’s really helpful