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Changing spaces at the British Museum
The Queen Elizabeth II Great Court at the British Museum, London, UK. any ambitious development schemes were completed last year, at museums and art galleries around the world, after a period of building unequalled since the late 19th century. London’s most spectacular metamorphosis took place at the British Museum in Bloomsbury, where Foster & Partners’ design transformed the “forgotten”, built-over inner courtyard into a lofty, light-filled civic space. The construction of the Queen Elizabeth II Great Court has reinvigorated the museum, by restoring the spatial logic of its original floor plan and by providing a much needed circulation area, for the almost 6 million visitors the museum receives each year. Robert Smirke, the architect who designed the museum’s Greek revival south front and quadrangular layout in the early 19th century, had provided an open courtyard at the building’s centre. In the 1850s, however, space was already at a premium. Antonio Panizzi, the museum’s principal librarian or director, drew preliminary sketches for a
Dennis Gilbert/VIEW
M
circular building to accommodate readers. Sydney Smirke, who had taken over from his brother as the principal architect, designed the Reading Room as a drum, surmounted by a dome, placed near the centre of the courtyard. Building work began in 1854, and was completed in 1857. As part of the scheme, the quadrants between the outer perimeter of the Reading Room and the inner walls of the quadrangle were filled-in with four book stacks. In 1876, in a further corruption of Robert Smirke’s concept, the inner portico of its south façade was demolished, so that the front entrance hall could be extended northwards. The museum trustees began considering how to “recover” this lost space, when plans to build the British Library were announced. Rebuilding at the museum began in the 1990s, when the new library in St Pancras was finally completed, and the book stacks in Bloomsbury were no longer needed. They were demolished, exposing the outer walls of the Reading Room and the inner walls of the courtyard. The area was roofed with glass panels, supported in a steel grid stretching over the spaces between the drum of Sydney Smirke’s Reading Room and the top of Robert Smirke’s elevations, creating Europe’s largest covered square. The continuous, highly curved roof is rather like a square doughnut with a hole through its centre, accommodating the dome of the Reading Room, which projects above it, into the London skyline. Visitors entering the museum now see the magnificent Great Court directly in front of them. Two broad staircases encircle the drum of the Reading Room, leading to a semi-elliptical building on its northern side. The mezzanine level accommodates a temporary exhibition gallery,
Glass panels in a steel grid form the ceiling
THE LANCET • Vol 357 • March 24, 2001
positioned between two curves, the semi-circle of the Reading Room and the half-ellipse of Foster & Partners’ building. Inevitably, this display space seems cramped in comparison with the Great Court’s Brobdingnagian proportions. Diners in the restaurant on the upper level, seated halfway between the floor of the Great Court and its glazed roof, have
Phil Sayer
Changing spaces at the British Museum
The Great Court by night
surrealistic views across to Robert Smirke’s massive porticoes and down through the Reading Room’s windows to the regilded and repainted inner surfaces of the dome. A bridge to the north connects the upper level of the ellipse with the upper-level galleries of the museum. The Reading Room and the semielliptical building are clad with Spanish limestone, in a simple stack bond. The façades of Robert Smirke’s quadrangle have been conserved and restored and the south portico, which was destroyed when the front hall was extended northwards, has been recreated. Concern has been expressed that French limestone was used in rebuilding the south portico, however, the newly cut and carved stone should weather to tone with the surrounding Portland stone. The critical point is that the recreation of the south portico was vital in re-establishing Robert Smirke’s south-north axis,
965
For personal use only. Reproduce with permission from The Lancet Publishing Group.
DISSECTING ROOM
A marble lion from Knidos, Asia Minor
providing a through route from the front to the back of the museum. With the departure of ticket-holders to the British Library, the restored Reading Room is now open to all
From the medical museum Pennant’s serpent dward May, a “Doctor of Physick” practising in London during the reign of Charles I, published a pamphlet in 1639 entitled A Most Certain and True Relation of A Strange Monster or Serpent Found In the Left Ventricle of the Heart of John Pennant, Gentleman, of the age of 21 Years. Dr May directed the necropsy for Pennant’s family, who wished to under-
E
Wellcome Trust Library
Rights were not granted to include this image in electronic media. Please refer to the printed journal.
Dr May’s illustration of the “serpent”
966
stand his fatal illness. The work was done by a local surgeon, Jacob Heydon, who drew attention to the young man’s heart. The right ventricle was “of an ashe colour shrivelled, and wrinkled like a leather purse without money”. Within the left ventricle was found a whitish “carnouse [fleshy] substance . . . like a Worme or Serpent”. Physician, surgeon, and family members present were equally amazed by the find, and all examined its inner solidity with a bodkin. Dr May departed, satisfied. Only afterwards did he discover that Heydon’s request to retain the serpent had been refused: “The surgeon . . . had a great desire to conserve it, had not the Mother desired that it should be buried where it was borne; saying and repeating: ‘As It came with him, so It shall goe with him’”. Pennant’s mother pointedly remained in the room to witness both heart and serpent restored to her son’s chest cavity. She “departed not til shee had seene [Heydon] sew it up againe into the body”. May’s rage at Dorothy Pennant’s “ignorance” found literary vent in his pamphlet, in which he illustrated the serpent as near life-size as he could recollect, and its position in the heart. Happily his vexation supplies us with an intimate view of the social relationships involved in an early 17th century necropsy: medical men commissioned and witnessed by a bereaved family, who verified their findings.
(1907): “Ansell was in his favourite haunt—the Reading-Room of the British Museum. In that book-encircled space he always could find peace . . . There he knew that his life was not ignoble.” On display in the concourse is an eclectic selection of 12 of the museum’s sculptures, representing the cultures and objects displayed in the galleries beyond the Great Court. Included is a marble lion, from Knidos in Asia Minor, that once crowned a monumental tomb situated at a cliff edge above the sea. Carved 2300 years ago, its empty eye sockets were probably inset with glass, to reflect the light. If the lion could regain its sight, it would be amazed at the evolutionary changes at Bloomsbury, in preparation for the British Museum’s 250th anniversary in 2003. Colin Martin 32 Woodstock Road, London W4 1UF, UK
Rights were not granted to include this image in electronic media. Please refer to the printed journal. Wellcome Trust Library
British Museum
visitors, housing a new public reference library that takes advantage of the latest technology. For much of its 150 years the Reading Room was a “library of last resort”, obliging readers applying for tickets to show that their research could not reasonably be undertaken in another library. The building became a refuge for political exiles and revolutionaries. Karl Marx worked there daily for almost 30 years, refining his theory of class struggle in Das Kapital. Later, V I Lenin and Leon Trotsky obtained readers’ tickets under aliases and researched there, while awaiting their chance to implement Marx’s theories. As a precautionary measure, the museum trustees withdrew Cundall’s Dictionary of Explosives and removed it from the Reading Room catalogue! E M Forster acknowledged the room’s spirituality in The longest day
The heart with the “serpent” inside it
Most likely, the serpent was clotted plasma. The idea that it was a monstrous worm or serpent originated with the medical men, showing that ignorance was hardly confined to the lay public. If plasma it was, Dorothy Pennant seems the better judge of what constituted “self” in this case than the physician who excoriated in print her “sugar-sop . . . babish . . . Cockney disposition”. The significance now of Dr May’s pamphlet resides in its confirmation that although a shared commitment to pathological enquiry is of long standing, so too is medical vexation at the profound disjunction between public and professional notions of what appropriately belongs to the dead. Ruth Richardson C/o The Lancet, London, UK Thanks to John Eyers at the Library of London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
THE LANCET • Vol 357 • March 24, 2001
For personal use only. Reproduce with permission from The Lancet Publishing Group.
Dennis Gilbert/VIEW
M
circular building to accommodate readers. Sydney Smirke, who had taken over from his brother as the principal architect, designed the Reading Room as a drum, surmounted by a dome, placed near the centre of the courtyard. Building work began in 1854, and was completed in 1857. As part of the scheme, the quadrants between the outer perimeter of the Reading Room and the inner walls of the quadrangle were filled-in with four book stacks. In 1876, in a further corruption of Robert Smirke’s concept, the inner portico of its south façade was demolished, so that the front entrance hall could be extended northwards. The museum trustees began considering how to “recover” this lost space, when plans to build the British Library were announced. Rebuilding at the museum began in the 1990s, when the new library in St Pancras was finally completed, and the book stacks in Bloomsbury were no longer needed. They were demolished, exposing the outer walls of the Reading Room and the inner walls of the courtyard. The area was roofed with glass panels, supported in a steel grid stretching over the spaces between the drum of Sydney Smirke’s Reading Room and the top of Robert Smirke’s elevations, creating Europe’s largest covered square. The continuous, highly curved roof is rather like a square doughnut with a hole through its centre, accommodating the dome of the Reading Room, which projects above it, into the London skyline. Visitors entering the museum now see the magnificent Great Court directly in front of them. Two broad staircases encircle the drum of the Reading Room, leading to a semi-elliptical building on its northern side. The mezzanine level accommodates a temporary exhibition gallery,
Glass panels in a steel grid form the ceiling
THE LANCET • Vol 357 • March 24, 2001
positioned between two curves, the semi-circle of the Reading Room and the half-ellipse of Foster & Partners’ building. Inevitably, this display space seems cramped in comparison with the Great Court’s Brobdingnagian proportions. Diners in the restaurant on the upper level, seated halfway between the floor of the Great Court and its glazed roof, have
Phil Sayer
Changing spaces at the British Museum
The Great Court by night
surrealistic views across to Robert Smirke’s massive porticoes and down through the Reading Room’s windows to the regilded and repainted inner surfaces of the dome. A bridge to the north connects the upper level of the ellipse with the upper-level galleries of the museum. The Reading Room and the semielliptical building are clad with Spanish limestone, in a simple stack bond. The façades of Robert Smirke’s quadrangle have been conserved and restored and the south portico, which was destroyed when the front hall was extended northwards, has been recreated. Concern has been expressed that French limestone was used in rebuilding the south portico, however, the newly cut and carved stone should weather to tone with the surrounding Portland stone. The critical point is that the recreation of the south portico was vital in re-establishing Robert Smirke’s south-north axis,
965
For personal use only. Reproduce with permission from The Lancet Publishing Group.
DISSECTING ROOM
A marble lion from Knidos, Asia Minor
providing a through route from the front to the back of the museum. With the departure of ticket-holders to the British Library, the restored Reading Room is now open to all
From the medical museum Pennant’s serpent dward May, a “Doctor of Physick” practising in London during the reign of Charles I, published a pamphlet in 1639 entitled A Most Certain and True Relation of A Strange Monster or Serpent Found In the Left Ventricle of the Heart of John Pennant, Gentleman, of the age of 21 Years. Dr May directed the necropsy for Pennant’s family, who wished to under-
E
Wellcome Trust Library
Rights were not granted to include this image in electronic media. Please refer to the printed journal.
Dr May’s illustration of the “serpent”
966
stand his fatal illness. The work was done by a local surgeon, Jacob Heydon, who drew attention to the young man’s heart. The right ventricle was “of an ashe colour shrivelled, and wrinkled like a leather purse without money”. Within the left ventricle was found a whitish “carnouse [fleshy] substance . . . like a Worme or Serpent”. Physician, surgeon, and family members present were equally amazed by the find, and all examined its inner solidity with a bodkin. Dr May departed, satisfied. Only afterwards did he discover that Heydon’s request to retain the serpent had been refused: “The surgeon . . . had a great desire to conserve it, had not the Mother desired that it should be buried where it was borne; saying and repeating: ‘As It came with him, so It shall goe with him’”. Pennant’s mother pointedly remained in the room to witness both heart and serpent restored to her son’s chest cavity. She “departed not til shee had seene [Heydon] sew it up againe into the body”. May’s rage at Dorothy Pennant’s “ignorance” found literary vent in his pamphlet, in which he illustrated the serpent as near life-size as he could recollect, and its position in the heart. Happily his vexation supplies us with an intimate view of the social relationships involved in an early 17th century necropsy: medical men commissioned and witnessed by a bereaved family, who verified their findings.
(1907): “Ansell was in his favourite haunt—the Reading-Room of the British Museum. In that book-encircled space he always could find peace . . . There he knew that his life was not ignoble.” On display in the concourse is an eclectic selection of 12 of the museum’s sculptures, representing the cultures and objects displayed in the galleries beyond the Great Court. Included is a marble lion, from Knidos in Asia Minor, that once crowned a monumental tomb situated at a cliff edge above the sea. Carved 2300 years ago, its empty eye sockets were probably inset with glass, to reflect the light. If the lion could regain its sight, it would be amazed at the evolutionary changes at Bloomsbury, in preparation for the British Museum’s 250th anniversary in 2003. Colin Martin 32 Woodstock Road, London W4 1UF, UK
Rights were not granted to include this image in electronic media. Please refer to the printed journal. Wellcome Trust Library
British Museum
visitors, housing a new public reference library that takes advantage of the latest technology. For much of its 150 years the Reading Room was a “library of last resort”, obliging readers applying for tickets to show that their research could not reasonably be undertaken in another library. The building became a refuge for political exiles and revolutionaries. Karl Marx worked there daily for almost 30 years, refining his theory of class struggle in Das Kapital. Later, V I Lenin and Leon Trotsky obtained readers’ tickets under aliases and researched there, while awaiting their chance to implement Marx’s theories. As a precautionary measure, the museum trustees withdrew Cundall’s Dictionary of Explosives and removed it from the Reading Room catalogue! E M Forster acknowledged the room’s spirituality in The longest day
The heart with the “serpent” inside it
Most likely, the serpent was clotted plasma. The idea that it was a monstrous worm or serpent originated with the medical men, showing that ignorance was hardly confined to the lay public. If plasma it was, Dorothy Pennant seems the better judge of what constituted “self” in this case than the physician who excoriated in print her “sugar-sop . . . babish . . . Cockney disposition”. The significance now of Dr May’s pamphlet resides in its confirmation that although a shared commitment to pathological enquiry is of long standing, so too is medical vexation at the profound disjunction between public and professional notions of what appropriately belongs to the dead. Ruth Richardson C/o The Lancet, London, UK Thanks to John Eyers at the Library of London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
THE LANCET • Vol 357 • March 24, 2001
For personal use only. Reproduce with permission from The Lancet Publishing Group.