Pitt Rivers Museum
Words, voices and images: Connecting to cultures around the world
“What it does, the museum, is to put the objects first. So that you look at the objects, this is a virtually unique way of ordering and displaying ethnographic objects”. David Attenborough
Duration
7.42
Director
Andrea and Peter Hylands
Cinematography
Andrea Hylands
Sitting in the upstairs bar at Paddington Station, the train to Oxford delayed, time for another pint to wash down the London air. Soon we were on the train, then out, beyond the London suburbs, looking at the rolling green countryside flashing by.
Peter and Andrea Hylands are back in Oxford and staying at the Old Bank Hotel in Oxford High Street, time for a dinner and then a night walk around Oxford, along Catte Street, then by the Radcliffe Camera and the Bodleian. These and other buildings, all with their night lighting, transporting us back through the centuries of learning, all as beautiful as it ever was.
The purpose of this visit to Oxford was to explore the Pitt Rivers Museum collection. As children in Britain, in Europe and the Middle East, it was the museums and galleries that taught us about the world and encouraged the great urge to go and explore as much of it as possible.
We have never lost our enthusiasm for these institutions and we visit them whenever we can. So we set off from the hotel the next morning, eager to revisit the museum’s collection.
The Pitt Rivers Museum is a museum of ethnography and world archaeology and one of several museums belonging to the University of Oxford. As a department of the University of Oxford, the Pitt Rivers Museum is used by staff and students for teaching and research. The Museum is also open to the public and is a great resource for school students, a resource that allows detailed investigations of objects and cultures and one which provides an insight into the resourcefulness of human societies around the world. Sometimes the similarity of solutions to problems, from societies which would not have been directly in contact with each other, are startling.
People who know the Pitt Rivers Museum well, carry with them a great fondness for the Museum and its collection. In 2007 the Museum completed a major new extension which includes a special exhibitions gallery that accommodates curated exhibitions of the Museum’s reserve objects and photographic collection.
In 2009 the entrance to the Museum (which adjoins the Oxford University Museum of Natural History) was redesigned.
Reopening the Museum in May 2009, David Attenborough had this to say about the Pitt Rivers Museum.
“What it does, the museum, is to put the objects first. So that you look at the objects, this is a virtually unique way of ordering and displaying ethnographic objects. I suggest to you a little game. What you might like to do is to go to one of these cases and not look at the label. Just look at the objects and try and work out what on earth all those objects have in common? A Museum that is unique in the world, that has treasures stemming from Captain Cook to objects that were collected a year or so ago. It’s a remarkable institution. Some might say, those of us who are connoisseurs of museums, that it holds a very, very special place in our affections. But it will also hold a place in the heart of anybody who comes in from the street and suddenly sees this, a nonpareil if ever there was one, a unique museum now available to all”.
To find out more about the Pitt Rivers Museum we spoke to Andrew McLellan, the Museum’s Education Officer, who provides an astute insight into the history and philosophy of the museum.
“The interaction with the object becomes an interaction, not with that object, but with the person or people who have made that object over a long period of time. Our job in the museum, is to facilitate that conversation between the people who made that object and are not here, and the people visiting the museum, who want to have that conversation. When it works it is an amazing thing to be part of”.
The Pitt Rivers Museum is a place which makes us think about the value that other cultures bring to our lives, both in diversity and similarity, and in a rich material culture.
Peter and Andrea Hylands are back in Oxford and staying at the Old Bank Hotel in Oxford High Street, time for a dinner and then a night walk around Oxford, along Catte Street, then by the Radcliffe Camera and the Bodleian. These and other buildings, all with their night lighting, transporting us back through the centuries of learning, all as beautiful as it ever was.
The purpose of this visit to Oxford was to explore the Pitt Rivers Museum collection. As children in Britain, in Europe and the Middle East, it was the museums and galleries that taught us about the world and encouraged the great urge to go and explore as much of it as possible.
We have never lost our enthusiasm for these institutions and we visit them whenever we can. So we set off from the hotel the next morning, eager to revisit the museum’s collection.
The Pitt Rivers Museum is a museum of ethnography and world archaeology and one of several museums belonging to the University of Oxford. As a department of the University of Oxford, the Pitt Rivers Museum is used by staff and students for teaching and research. The Museum is also open to the public and is a great resource for school students, a resource that allows detailed investigations of objects and cultures and one which provides an insight into the resourcefulness of human societies around the world. Sometimes the similarity of solutions to problems, from societies which would not have been directly in contact with each other, are startling.
People who know the Pitt Rivers Museum well, carry with them a great fondness for the Museum and its collection. In 2007 the Museum completed a major new extension which includes a special exhibitions gallery that accommodates curated exhibitions of the Museum’s reserve objects and photographic collection.
In 2009 the entrance to the Museum (which adjoins the Oxford University Museum of Natural History) was redesigned.
Reopening the Museum in May 2009, David Attenborough had this to say about the Pitt Rivers Museum.
“What it does, the museum, is to put the objects first. So that you look at the objects, this is a virtually unique way of ordering and displaying ethnographic objects. I suggest to you a little game. What you might like to do is to go to one of these cases and not look at the label. Just look at the objects and try and work out what on earth all those objects have in common? A Museum that is unique in the world, that has treasures stemming from Captain Cook to objects that were collected a year or so ago. It’s a remarkable institution. Some might say, those of us who are connoisseurs of museums, that it holds a very, very special place in our affections. But it will also hold a place in the heart of anybody who comes in from the street and suddenly sees this, a nonpareil if ever there was one, a unique museum now available to all”.
To find out more about the Pitt Rivers Museum we spoke to Andrew McLellan, the Museum’s Education Officer, who provides an astute insight into the history and philosophy of the museum.
“The interaction with the object becomes an interaction, not with that object, but with the person or people who have made that object over a long period of time. Our job in the museum, is to facilitate that conversation between the people who made that object and are not here, and the people visiting the museum, who want to have that conversation. When it works it is an amazing thing to be part of”.
The Pitt Rivers Museum is a place which makes us think about the value that other cultures bring to our lives, both in diversity and similarity, and in a rich material culture.
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