Series RAS COLL7/1 - 1823-1969

The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland was founded by the eminent Sanskrit scholar Sir Henry Thomas Colebrooke on the 15th March 1823. It received its Royal Charter from King George IV on the 11th August 1824 'for the investigation of subjects connected with and for the encouragement of science, literature and the arts in relation to Asia'. It continues as a forum for those who are interested in the languages, cultures and history of Asia to meet and exchange ideas.

The Indian Institute was an institute within the University of Oxford. It was started by Sir Monier Monier-Williams in 1883 to provide training for the Indian Civil Service. The institute's building is located in central Oxford, England, at the north end of Catte Street, on the corner with Holywell Street, and facing down Broad Street from the east. The original Indian Institute building is now the Oxford Martin School of the University of Oxford, the History Faculty having moved to the old City of Oxford School building on George Street and its library to the Bodleian site.

The Victoria and Albert Museum (abbreviated V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The museum is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

The Arts Council of Great Britain was a non-departmental public body dedicated to the promotion of the fine arts in Great Britain. It was divided in 1994 to form the Arts Council of England (now Arts Council England), the Scottish Arts Council (later merged into Creative Scotland), and the Arts Council of Wales. In January 1940, during the Second World War, the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts was appointed to help promote and maintain British culture. Chaired by Lord De La Warr, President of the Board of Education, the council was government-funded and after the war was renamed the Arts Council of Great Britain. Reginald Jacques was appointed musical director with Sir Henry Walford Davies and George Dyson also involved. John Denison took over after the war. A royal charter was granted on 9 August 1946 followed by another in 1967. The latter provided for functions in Scotland and Wales to be conducted by two committees known as the Scottish and Welsh Arts Councils – the basis for the later Scottish Arts Council and Arts Council of Wales.

The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. On 7 June 1753, King George II gave his royal assent to the Act of Parliament which established the British Museum. The British Museum Act 1753 added two other libraries to the Sir Hans Sloane collection, those of the Cottonian Library, assembled by Sir Robert Cotton, dating back to Elizabethan times, and the Harleian Library, the collection of the Earls of Oxford. They were joined in 1757 by the "Old Royal Library", now the Royal manuscripts, assembled by various British monarchs.

Montagu House, c. 1715
The British Museum was the first of a new kind of museum – national, belonging to neither church nor king, freely open to the public and aiming to collect everything. Sloane's collection, while including a vast miscellany of objects, tended to reflect his scientific interests.[16] The addition of the Cotton and Harley manuscripts introduced a literary and antiquarian element, and meant that the British Museum now became both National Museum and library

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is an art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the fourth-largest museum in the world and the largest art museum in the Americas. The New York State Legislature granted the Metropolitan Museum of Art an Act of Incorporation on April 13, 1870, "for the purpose of establishing and maintaining in said City a Museum and Library of Art, of encouraging and developing the Study of the Fine Arts, and the application of Art to manufacture and natural life, of advancing the general knowledge of kindred subjects, and to that end of furnishing popular instruction and recreations". This legislation was supplemented later by the 1893 Act, Chapter 476, which required that its collections "shall be kept open and accessible to the public free of all charge throughout the year". The founders included businessmen and financiers, among them Theodore Roosevelt Sr., the father of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the US, as well as leading artists and thinkers of the day, who wanted to open a museum to bring art and art education to the American people. Henry Gurdon Marquand donated an important part of his collection of Old Masters paintings to the fledgling institution. The museum first opened on February 20, 1872, housed in a building located at 681 Fifth Avenue.

Reading Museum is a museum, located in the Town Hall, of the history of the town of Reading, in the English county of Berkshire, and the surrounding area. Reading Town Hall was built in several phases between 1786 and 1897, although the principal façade was designed by Alfred Waterhouse in 1875. In 1879, the foundation stone was laid for a new wing containing a library and museum, and the museum duly opened in 1883. The museum displayed a large eclectic collection from the late Horatio Bland. Three art galleries were added in further extension in 1897In 1975, the civic offices moved out of the Town Hall to Reading Civic Centre. They were followed in 1985 by the Reading Central Library which left only the museum and the concert hall in use. After some debate, plans to demolish the Town Hall and replace it with a new cultural centre were abandoned, and in 1986 refurbishment of the building started. The museum was closed for renewal in 1989, reopening in stages from 1993 (the Reading: People & Place gallery) to 2000.