ASHMOLEAN MANAGEMENT

The Ashmolean is structured under 5 departments:

1. Operations
2. Collections
3. Public Engagement
4. Development
5. Commercial

Find out more about the different departments and the people behind them below.

OPERATIONS

The Ashmolean Operations Department is the Front Line of the Museum. All our Visitor Experience Assistants who you see in our galleries are part of the Operations Department, along with Health, Safety and Security and our Museum Services.

Operations Director
Rachel Davies

Finance
Andrew Noton is Head of Finance

Head of Health, Safety and Security
Mike Finneran

COLLECTIONS

The Ashmolean has 7 different departments: Antiquities, Eastern Art, Western Art, the Heberden Coin Room and Cast Gallery are all responsible for the administration, scholarship and curatorship of our objects. Conservation and University Engagement work with objects across the different departments to preserve (in the case of conservation) and engage the wider university in using object based learning in their taught courses and assessments.

Antiquities

The Department of Antiquities contains internationally renowned archaeological collections with particular strengths in Prehistoric Europe, the Ancient Near East, Ancient Egypt and Sudan, Minoan Aegean, Mycenaean and Classical Greece, Ancient Cyprus, the Roman world and Medieval and later Europe. We also hold the Museum's Founding Collection and historic archives.

Sackler Keeper of Antiquities
Dr Paul Roberts

Western Art

The Department of Western Art houses outstanding collections of European fine and decorative arts from the Renaissance to the present day. They include Old Master and later paintings, drawings, watercolours, and prints; English and continental ceramics, sculpture, silver, watches, rings, and musical instruments.

Keeper of Western Art
Professor Catherine Whistler

Eastern Art

The Department of Eastern Art is managed by geographic area with specialist curators for art from the Islamic world, India and Southeast Asia, China and Korea, and Japan. Promoting the collections as an educational resource is a key area of the Department’s activities; the curators teach and supervise students, provide special access to the collections for research purposes and publish their own research.

Keeper of Eastern Art
Dr Mallica Kumbera Landrus

Heberden Coin Room

The Heberden Coin Room is one of the leading international coin cabinets with particular strengths in the fields of Greek, Roman, Celtic, Byzantine, Medieval, Islamic and Chinese coinages. We also hold collections of paper money, tokens, jetons, and commemorative art medals.

Keeper of Heberden Coin Room
Professor Chris Howgego

Cast Gallery

The Ashmolean Cast Gallery is one of the oldest, largest, and best-preserved collections of casts of Greek and Roman sculpture in the UK, containing some 900 plaster casts of statues, reliefs, and architectural sculptures.

Keeper of the Cast Gallery
Professor Bert Smith

Conservation

The conservation department is responsible for the care and protection of Ashmolean objects. We have dedicated teams and techniques for the conservation of paper, textiles, objects and paintings. Each conservation project reveals a new side to an object. By using techniques like x-ray, radiography and RTI technology you get a 360 degree view of what lies beneath the surface of some of our most prized objects in our collections.

Head of Conservation
Daniel Bone