Oxford University's Ashmolean Museum - Open Once Again, Transformed

Everyone seems happy with the upgrade/renovation/extension of the Ashmolean, Oxford's university library. Here is a review in The Guardian by Stephen Bayley and here is a review in The Telegraph by Richard Dorment.

Dorment: The architect Rick Mather has left the wonderful Cockerell building intact, but audaciously replaced the undistinguished late Victorian galleries at the rear with a six-storey building that adds 34 new galleries and four new spaces for temporary exhibitions — effectively doubling the size of the old museum. In addition to what the public sees, the Ashmolean has a new conservation studio, and an education centre which, considering it’s function as a teaching museum in the heart of Oxford, amazes me didn’t exist before.

Bayley: while it was not official policy to discourage visitors, the grim Ashmolean certainly intimidated them. To enter was to breach the protocols of a club privée. A visit for pleasure was as gross an intrusion as taking a whoopee cushion to high table in Magdalen. That has now changed, and rather radically so. The magnificent facade and portico remain intact, but an entire new museum of 39 galleries and about 100,000 sq ft has been built, almost surreptitiously, behind.