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The Secret Life of the Museum

Secret Life of the Museum exhibition banner

TEMPORARY EXHIBITION: 10 AUGUST – 14 NOVEMBER

A decade after their last exhibition, this is a rare opportunity to see a selection of the finds made beneath the floorboards of the Top Gallery during the Museum’s re-development in 1999. All sorts of treasures – every day things and precious objects – were dropped through the floorboards, whether accidentally or intentionally. They form an unofficial but revealing record of life in the Ashmolean Museum in the 18th century.

Further information about the floorboard objects (and archaeological finds from of the area behind the Museum) can be found here.

A more detailed account of the re-development and the history of this important building can be found in the exhibition catalogue ‘Solomon’s House in Oxford: New Finds from the First Museum’ – available from the Museum shop.