The Old Speech Room Gallery & Museum is located in the Old Speech Room, which was built in 1819-1821 as a room to encourage public speaking. The gallery was opened in 1976 to house the School's collections, which include Egyptian and Greek antiquities, English watercolours, Modern British paintings, books and natural history artefacts. There is a set of gilt Easter eggs created by contemporary gold and silversmith Stuart Devlin, which have been designed in the tradition of Fabergé eggs and include surprise interiors. There are also some sculptures, including portrait busts of such Old Harrovians as Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Lord Byron.
The paintings include Sir Winston Churchill's A Distant View of Venice, 1929. Other artists include George Romney, David Jones, Victor Pasmore and Richard Shirley Smith.
The Museum hosts themed exhibits from its collections. Admission is free.
Read more about this topic: Harrow School
Famous quotes containing the words speech, room, gallery and/or museum:
“Our speech has its weaknesses and its defects, like all the rest. Most of the occasions for the troubles of the world are grammatical.”
—Michel de Montaigne (15331592)
“The kind of scientist who has no room for faith in his universe is rather old-fashioned nowadays.”
—Robert D. Andrews, and Nick GrindĂ©. Dr. John Garth (Boris Karloff)
“Each morning the manager of this gallery substituted some new picture, distinguished by more brilliant or harmonious coloring, for the old upon the walls.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“The Museum is not meant either for the wanderer to see by accident or for the pilgrim to see with awe. It is meant for the mere slave of a routine of self-education to stuff himself with every sort of incongruous intellectual food in one indigestible meal.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (18741936)