Exactly how a small eccentric museum should be (Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford))

Member Name: koshkha

Product:	Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford)
Date:	13/01/09 (204 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: There's nothing quite like it

Disadvantages: It's closed until May - so plenty of time to plan your visit

I thought it was time to take a brief diversion away from my Bhutan and India holiday reviews and write about something even more exotic but a lot closer to home - The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. I am the sort of person who gets very attached to museums and even though this is a small one, it's right up in my top 10 with some of the more obvious candidates like the V&A and the British Museum. However, the Pitt Rivers isn't a museum that's particularly well known or well publicised - witness the fact that nobody has ever written about it for dooyoo. I rest my case with my tongue only slightly in my cheek - how famous can anything be if it's not be dooyoo-ed?

The Pitt Rivers Museum is a treasure chest of the weird and wonderful and ought to be on the must-see list of every tourist visiting Oxford but sadly, it rarely is. Those of us who know and love this quirky little museum are sometimes torn between the desire to sell its joys to the world and to keep it as our own special little secret. The Pitt Rivers is the sort of place you need to know exists in order to seek it out. You won't see it from the street because it's tucked away at the back of its sister museum, the much grander and more showy Oxford University Museum which I should stress is itself well worthy of a good visit too and neither will set you back a penny.

I have to confess that despite studying in a building right next door to the Oxford University Museum and taking lectures regularly in the building itself, I got through four years as a student in the city without ever venturing into the Pitt Rivers - mind you, the same could be said of the Museum of the History of Science which I lived right next to for a year and never bothered visiting either. When I finally did go in, I was bowled over by what I found.

**Who or What was Pitt Rivers?**

Lieutenant General Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers was a true Victorian eccentric and a man with a voracious appetite for collecting. As an army officer with a passion for archaeology and ethnology he travelled the world gathering goodies wherever he went. He didn't focus on any specific areas or specialise in particular countries, he just travelled around gathering masses of 'stuff' to take home to Blighty. Pitt Rivers collected just about anything and everything that could be encompassed under the very broad umbrella of 'Ethnography'. He travelled around the world and, a bit like me on my holidays, filled his luggage with all manner or weird stuff. Unlike me he then endowed his collection to Oxford University on the condition that they had to build a home for it and had to appoint a lecturer in anthropology. From his original bequest of 18000 items in 1884, the collection has expanded and today contains more than half a million pieces. This is not a place where you'd want to tackle the dusting.

**Why is this museum so unusual**

What makes the Pitt Rivers museum so different from most is the way it displays its items. Pitt Rivers was heavily influenced by the evolutionary ideas of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer and arranged the items in his collection in a combination of typology and chronologically that aimed to show how human ideas and behaviours had evolved around the world.

Most museums would put together all the exhibits from a particular country in one place, and all those from another in a different section. Or they might put everything from a particular historic period in one section. What the Pitt Rivers Museum does is display items according to what they are or how they are used - not by who made them or where they came from. Thus all the woven baskets go together, all the musical instruments are shown beside each other, jewellery is all in the same area regardless of whether it's fancy precious metals from Europe or feathers from the South Pacific or shells from native Americans. In doing this, the exhibition shows how people separated by vast distances and sometimes many centuries worked out different - or sometimes very similar - ways to solve the same problems. I love it!

**Controversy**

There are some very controversial exhibits, not least the so-called 'shrunken heads' from Ecuador and Peru. Decades of debate has surrounded whether it's right and proper to exhibit human remains of this type and whether you are for or against, it's still fascinating to read about the process of shrinking the skin off the heads by filling them with hot sand. There are also mummies and other human remains which continue to be the subject of debate and periodically items do get returned to their original origins if it's considered appropriate.

**Don't Miss....**

One of my personal favourite exhibits is the 'Witch in a bottle' - a small glass bottle with a label on it warning people not to open it because there's a witch inside. Priceless but admittedly something you could very easily miss without the help of one of the museum's free maps or audio guides. I also love the feather coats from the south Pacific, the model boats and some of the more modern exhibits of Inuit clothing from northern Canada.

**A real 'experience'**

My description might sound a bit dry and dusty like some of the exhibits and it's important to remember that this is a serious academic teaching and research collection as well as one of the best free attractions in the city. However, there's something quite magical about the layout of the museum and the subdued lighting which, combined with the bizarre way that things are displayed means you never quite know what you might find round the next corner. Kids LOVE the Pitt Rivers because it's just so different from the normal modern-day museums that often try a bit too hard with their work sheets and slightly patronising 'push this button, touch this item' attempts to 'engage' with children. It's the kind of place where all sorts of spooky stories could be set and I believe Philip Pullman has included it in some of his stories though I have to confess I've not read any of them.

There's a fantastic free audio tour available which guides you through some of the famous or noteworthy exhibits but even with the map provided, it's easy to miss a few. The museum building has a large high central hall with cast iron balconies suspended around the outside of the room on two higher levels. Look upwards and you'll see that the vertical space is used as well as the horizontal, with a tall totem pole reaching up to the roof and some boats suspended in the roof space.

** Don't go and visit just yet **

The museum has recently built an extension to enable more of the collection to be exhibited and for this reason it's currently closed to the public and expected to reopen in May 2009. I'm planning to sign up for membership of the Friends of the Museum so I can support their work and - I hope - get invited to lots of cool events. Surely there must be a good party when they open up again! Who could resist warm wine, stale nibbles and an evening with some freaky old relics?

Don't just take my word for it that the Pitt Rivers is something special - the list of Patrons at the museum is very impressive and includes Sir David Attenborough, Michael Palin and writer Philip Pullman. If it's good enough for those three, you can be sure it's something special.

Summary: A real little treasure chest of the weird and wonderful