Museum of Childhood. The first building to be erected that still forms part of
the museum was the Sheepshanks Gallery in 1857
on the eastern side of the
garden.
Its architect was civil engineer Captain Francis Fowke, Royal
Engineers, who was appointed by Cole.
The next major expansions were
designed by the same architect, the Turner and Vernon galleries built 1858-9
to house the eponymous collections (later transferred to the Tate Gallery) and
now used as the picture galleries and tapestry gallery respectively. The North
and South Courts,
were then built, both of which opened by June 1862. They
now form the galleries for temporary exhibitions and are directly behind the
Sheepshanks Gallery. On the very northern edge
of the site is situated the
Secretariat Wing,
also built in 1862 this houses the offices and board room
etc. and is not open to the public.
An ambitious scheme of decoration was developed for these new areas: a
series of mosaic figures depicting famous European artists of the Medieval
and Renaissance period.
These have now been removed to other areas of the
museum. Also started were a series of frescoes by Lord Leighton:
Industrial
Arts as Applied to War
1878–1880 and
Industrial Arts Applied to Peace
,
which was started but never finished.
To the east of this were additional
galleries, the decoration of which was the work of another designer Owen
Jones, these were the Oriental Courts (covering India, China and Japan)
completed in 1863, none of this decoration survives,
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