Museums and art galleries

The major museums in London are the British Museum (the national collection of antiquities), the Victoria and Albert Museum, which houses the world's largest display of the decorative arts, the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum. There are many other small specialist museums in London and throughout the rest of the country, usually with an emphasis on history and British 'heritage'. There has been a move to make museums come alive with appropriate sounds and even smells.

Art galleries in London which house permanent collections include the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Tate Gallery, which is the nation's gallery of British art and the national museum of modern art. These galleries also hold special temporary exhibitions. The Hayward Gallery and the Royal Academy put on a series of shows, some of which are extremely popular. The Royal Academy is famous for its annual Summer Exhibition. Outside London there is the Burrell Collection near Glasgow and the Tate Galleries in Liverpool and St Ives. Most major towns and cities have their own museums and art galleries.

The British museum is one of the greatest and best known museums in the world. It was founded in 1753 by a decision of the Parliament. The British Museum, occupying a splendid great building, was constructed between 1823 and 1847.

From the eleven major departments into which the museum is divided, the most outstanding are the Assyrian and Babylonian, the Egyptian and the Greek and Roman Antiquities. The last makes a particular contribution to the glory of the museum with its collection of sculptures from the Pantheon.

There are also extremely important ethnological collections, including exhibits from the Pacific islands (such as ancient Polynesian idols), and America (such as the Aztec sculptures). African civilization is also well represented.

There is a considerable and priceless collection of medieval objects of art from all the countries of Europe.

The British Library (a department of the British Museum) has more than 10 million volumes, occupying 320 kilometres of shelf space. At present, the library is obliged to house a copy of every book published in the country. This obligation, however, will probably disappear in the future. It is just too difficult to organize. By 1993, its collection was expanding at the rate of 150 centimetres of books per hour. It has more than 6,000 different editions of Shakespeare's plays and more than 100 different editions of most novels by Charles Dickens. The result of all this is that it can take up to two days to find a particular book!

Vocabulary:

major – головний, основний	display – показ, демонстрація, виставка	outstanding – видатний
antiquities – старожитності	exhibition – виставка	obliged – зобов’язаний
house – вміщувати	exhibit – експонат	edition – видання

Questions:

1. Do you often go to museums? 2. Do you generally go there alone or with excursion? 3. What kind of museums are you most interested in? 4. What museums are there in Kyiv (in your town)? 5. What kind of museum is the British Museum? 6. What is the British Museum famous for? 7. How many departments are there in the British Museum? 8. What kinds of collections are represented in the British Museum? 9. Give some amazing facts about the British Library.

Grammar: Conditional Sentences І – Умовні речення І типу

if + Present Simple, will + infinitive (without to)

+	If I work harder, I will pass my exam.	Якщо я працюватиму наполегливіше, я складу іспит.
–	We will missour train if we don’t hurry.	Ми запізнимося на потяг, якщо не поспішимо.
?	What will you do if you lose your job?	Що ви робитимете, якщо втратите роботу?

Умовне речення I типу виражає можливу ситуацію та її вірогідний результат в майбутньому.

If you don’t take an umbrella,	you’ll get wet.	I’ll tell him the news	when I see him.
умовна частина	результативна частина	результативна частина	умовна частина
Якщо ти не візьмеш парасольку,	ти промокнеш.	Я розповім йому новини,	коли я побачу його.

Сполучники часу, які використовуються в умовних реченнях: as soon as (як тільки), after (після), until (доки), before (перед тим як; до того).

Дата добавления: 2015-10-16