The Ashmolean Museum opened at the University of Oxford in England to house collections donated by Elias Ashmole. It became the world's first university museum and one of the earliest institutions built for public access to organised collections. Its displays brought natural specimens, antiquities and curiosities together.

Museums changed how poets encountered material traces of antiquity, foreign cultures and natural history. Collections such as the Ashmolean helped nourish antiquarian poetry, Romantic meditations on objects and later ekphrastic writing inspired by visual art.