British Museum_2018 12 07_0146 by HBarrison

Man’s Cloth (aluminum, 1998-2001) by El Anatsui (b. 1944), a Ghanaian sculptor active for much of his career in Nigeria. He has drawn particular international attention for his "bottle-top installations", distinctive large-scale assemblages of thousands of pieces of aluminum sourced from alcohol recycling stations and sewn together with copper wire, transformed into metallic cloth-like wall sculptures in a way that can "draw connections between consumption, waste, and the environment" | British Museum, located in the Bloomsbury area of London, is a public institution dedicated to human history, art and culture. Its permanent collection numbers some 8 million works, and is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence having been widely sourced during the era of the British Empire, and documenting the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present. It is the first national public museum in the world. The British Museum was established in 1753, largely based on the collections of the Irish physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane. It first opened to the public on 15 January 1759, in Montagu House, on the site of the current building. Its expansion over the following two and a half centuries was largely a result of expanding British colonization and has resulted in the creation of several branch institutions, the first being the British Museum (Natural History) – now the Natural History Museum – in 1881. The museum is sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and as with all other national museums in the United Kingdom it charges no admission fee, except for loan exhibitions. Its ownership of some of its most famous objects originating in other countries is disputed and remains the subject of international controversy, most notably in the case of the Parthenon Marbles. The British Museum was founded as a "universal museum"; its foundations lie in the will of the Irish physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753), a London-based doctor and scientist from Ulster. During the course of his lifetime Sloane gathered a large collection of curiosities and, not wishing to see his collection broken up after death, he bequeathed it to King George II, for the nation.