Enlightenment

Long rows of bookcases frame this gallery. It was designed for George III’s library and is the oldest room in the present Museum building. The royal library is now at the British Library. Its former home contains a permanent exhibition about collecting and knowledge during the Enlightenment. The cases bring together subjects that helped form the early Museum, including the natural world, ancient writing, archaeology, art and religion. Collectors arranged objects by material, date, form and use. Hans Sloane’s collections and other founding libraries became the basis of the British Museum under the Act of 1753. These collections developed alongside European colonial expansion and the transatlantic slave trade. The displays examine those connections and the limits of a predominantly European system for classifying the world. You can look at an individual object, then at the arrangement around it.