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Oxford University Museum of Natural
History is home to an internationally

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significant natural history collection,
including the first dinosaur fossils to

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be scientifically described and the only
surviving soft tissue from a dodo

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anywhere in the world.
But it's also one of the most remarkable

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buildings of the Gothic revival,
a treasure house of Victorian sculpture

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and design.
My name is John Holmes. I'm professor of

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Victorian Literature and Culture at the
University of Birmingham,

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and an Honorary Associate of the museum.
Over this series of podcasts I want to

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introduce you to the art and
architecture of Oxford University Museum

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of Natural History
and to give you a virtual tour of this

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extraordinary and beautiful building.
In the last two episodes we looked at

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the art and architecture of the main
museum,

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on the façade, and in the central court.
In this episode we're going to move

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beyond its more familiar spaces
to look at how individual teaching rooms

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designed for particular scientific
disciplines were enhanced by the arts.

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The 19th century saw the maturing of
many scientific disciplines

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and the birth of many more. At the
beginning of the century, most of what we

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would now think of as the sciences
were little more than distinct lines of

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inquiry within either natural philosophy
or natural history. These terms match

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very approximately our own distinctions
between the physical sciences and the

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life sciences,
or between experimental and

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observational methods.
Even the word 'scientists' did not exist

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until it was coined by the Cambridge
philosopher William Hewell

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at an early meeting of the British
Association for the Advancement of

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Science in 1833.
By the 1850s, however, when Oxford

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University Museum of Natural History was
planned and built,

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science had already begun to fragment
into multiple different disciplines.

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This early plan of the museum shows how
these disciplines were built into its

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structure.
The northeast corner comprises a suite

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of rooms for studying Physiology and
Zoology,

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including the rather macabre sounding
Anatomical Yard.

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In the northwest we have Medicine, moving
around to Chemistry in the southwest and

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then onto rooms for Experimental
Philosophy,

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Geology and Mineralogy. There are bespoke
lecture rooms, dissecting rooms, and

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laboratories for the different
departments,

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as well as offices for the professors
and sitting rooms where they may have

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read,
met their students, or perhaps just taken

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tea. Upstairs, there was a large lecture
theatre,

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a library and a reading room, plus
departments for Entomology,

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Geometry and Astronomy. The east wall of
the museum was left blank for a

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prospective extension.
An opportunity for this came along in

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the 1880s when General Augustus Pitt
Rivers

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gave his anthropological collection to
the University, so that became in effect

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the anthropology department
as well as the Pitt Rivers Museum.

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Another extension,
the first purpose-built physics

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laboratory in England, opened in 1872.
When Charles Daubeny, one of the leaders

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of the campaign to build the museum,
described it as the "temple of science"

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he imagined the rooms around the museum
court as the "chambers of the ministering

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priests". Each priest worshiped science in his own

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way but they all met together in the
sanctuary of the temple –

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the central court – where the museum's
main collections were displayed

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and where all the scientific disciplines
could come together.

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As we have seen throughout this series
so far, Oxford University Museum of

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Natural History was built for scientists
who valued art

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and saw it as integral to the teaching
and celebration of science.

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Equally, the artists they worked with,
including John Ruskin and the

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Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,
valued and respected science, insisting

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that art should be judged by the same
exacting standards of rigor and truth.

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This reciprocal relationship between art
and science can be seen throughout the

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decorative schema at the museum,
in the spaces designed for individual

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disciplines, as well as across the façade
and in the central court.

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Like so many building projects, the
museum went over budget

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so only some rooms were decorated before
the funding ran out.

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During the 20th century, many of its
larger spaces were repurposed,

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with the Library split by mezzanines
into storage and office spaces,

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and a new ceiling put in the Lecture
Theatre. The decoration of the museum was

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only ever incomplete then,
and of that only parts remain. But there

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are two rooms in particular that are not
usually open to the public

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where we can see how art could be used
to teach science in Victorian England.

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The museum's first director, or Keeper as
he was called,

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was the geologist John Phillips. Phillips
was committed to the use of art and

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architecture to teach science.
As we saw in the last episode he planned

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the decorative schema around the museum's
central court,

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choosing the marbles for the columns and
which plants should be carved on their capitals.

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It must have been with Phillips's

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personal approval then, that the
Reverend Richard St John Tyrwhitt

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painted two huge murals on the walls of
the Geology lecture room.

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Like so many of the people involved in
designing and decorating the museum,

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Tyrwhitt was a disciple of John Ruskin.
It's not clear who chose the subjects

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for the two murals but Phillips must
have been consulted,

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and Ruskin too seems to have been
involved. One of them depicts the

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Mer de Glace in the French alps.
In 1854, Ruskin had

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visited this huge glacier,
now sadly largely melted as a result of

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climate change.
He had arranged for a daguerreotype

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photograph to be taken of it,
which he may well have lent to Tyrwhitt as

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an oil painting of the glacier by Tyrwhitt
owned by the museum bears a very close

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resemblance to Ruskin's photo.
For the mural Tyrwhitt imagined a

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different view of the glacier altogether,
looking out onto this sea of ice

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surrounded by bare mountain tops from
the mouth of a cave.

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The second mural on the opposite wall is
a view out over the Bay of Naples from

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the slopes of Vesuvius,
with the bare and jagged black rocks in

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the foreground made from the volcano's
hardened lava.

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The students who listened to Phillips's
lectures in this very room in the 1860s

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would have had constant reminders of the
great forces and principles of geology

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looming over them on either side: ice and
fire,

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erosion and eruption. It is easy to
imagine that Phillips even used them as

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visual aids in his own lectures.
If you had gone upstairs from the

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Geology lecture room to the same corridor
on the balcony above, you might have

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found yourself
in another of the museum's most

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distinctive rooms.
When the museum was founded, the

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entomologist Frederick William Hope
endowed Oxford's first chair in Zoology.

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A decade earlier, Hope had given
thousands of specimens of insects to

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Oxford University,
so when the museum was built a large

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room was designated as Mr Hope's
Entomological Museum,

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to house and display this collection.
Like the Geology lecture room, the Hope

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Museum – now known as the Westwood Room after John Obadiah Westwood, the first

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Hope Professor –
illustrates its discipline in its art.

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The centrepiece of the room is a
fireplace carved by Edward Whelan,

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one of the three Irish stonemasons who
executed most of the remarkable

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decorative sculpture at the museum.
Whelan's low relief freeze below the

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mantelpiece features two of Britain's
most charismatic insects:

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the Stag Beetle and the Death's Head Hawk Moth.

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From an artistic perspective the Stag
Beetle is visibly impressive, while the

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Death's Head Hawk Moth suggests an
ominous symbolism.

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But these carvings are not merely
decorative; they illustrate too

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the sexual dimorphism, life cycles, and
habitats of these two species.

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The beetles and their larvae are shown
on oak leaves; the moths, caterpillar and

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chrysalis on potatoes.
Not only are these the favourite foods of

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these two insects, but they're also key
crops for timber and food,

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emblems of the British Isles and
cornerstones of British and Irish

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livelihoods for centuries.
The Hope Museum's fireplace carved by

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Whelan, surely with Westwood's guidance,
is an object lesson in entomology,

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showing not only how insects grow but
how their lives are bound up in ecology,

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economics, and culture.
Even the wall decorations,

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lovingly painted by yet another of
Ruskin's disciples called Henry Swan,

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hint at the room's scientific purpose, as
leaves and twigs seem to transform into

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insects before our very eyes.
Like most of the men who taught at

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Oxford when the museum first opened in
1860,

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Phillips and Westwood were committed
natural theologians for whom natural

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history was the study of God's creation.
In the last episode of this series we

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will see what happened to the science and
the art of the museum

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when this world view collided with the
new evolutionary theories

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of Charles Darwin.