BSR VIRTUAL EXHIBITIONS

Conducting outreach in overseas countries was important for the BSR's future. According to a Royal Charter, the School's first objective was to promote the 'study of Archaeology, History and Letters, Architecture, Painting, Sculpture and the Allied Arts by British subjects' across the Empire (1912). For that reason, Eugenie Strong (BSR Assistant Director, 1909 to 1925) gave a BSR lecture in Canada, whilst touring the USA in 1913. Ashby did the same in 1914 when he toured Australia with the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS). That year, its congress was a multi-city travelling festival of science, the perfect format to promote the BSR to artists, architects and scholars across the continent.
But first, he had to get there. This map charts his four-month (7 July to 2 November 1914) round trip from Italy to Australia and returning via Sri Lanka and Malta. Initially, Ashby took the SS Isis to Port Said (Egypt) and then transhipped onto the SS Malwa. From that point, Henry Balfour, a fellow traveller and curator of the Pitts Rivers Museum (Oxford, UK), records their outbound voyage in a series of pithy diary entries. For example, Balfour describes seeing the mirage effect created by the heat haze in the Suez Canal (8 July 1914), the Malwa's struggle against a violent storm on the Arabian Sea (14 July), news of a small-pox outbreak at their destination (17 July), being greeted by a fleet of outrigger boats near Colombo (18 July), and passing by the 'Keeling [Cocos] Islands, during late afternoon' (22 July).

Diary: Henry Balfour, 1st of a 3-notebook diary from Australia. 1914. BAAS, Pitt Rivers Museum.
Charter: The British School at Rome: Charter of Incorporation (1912)