Pitt Rivers Museum
The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford is part of Oxford University and has housed the university's anthropological and archaeological collections since 1884 .
Since the opening, the collection has been expanded to more than 500,000 exhibits through donations and purchases, including from Heinrich Schliemann .
It is housed in the east wing of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and shares the main entrance with it.
history
This goes back to a generous donation of more than 18,000 objects by the English General Pitt Rivers . His interest in ethnographic objects was probably aroused at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. He was particularly interested in the scientific study of evolutionary developments in ancient cultures. This should be traced in the development series of objects. The first curator was the British archaeologist Henry Balfour (1863-1939).
The museum has close ties with Oxford University. In 1883 the first English chair for anthropology was established at Oxford on a donation condition from Pitt Rivers. Since the museum opened, the collection has been used very intensively for research and teaching purposes by the anthropological faculty. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the exhibits have been included in the practical part of the exams. Museum employees now teach the Masters course in Material Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at Oxford University.
Although the museum has been extensively expanded since 2004 with funds from the Higher Education Funding Council, the collection is largely accessible during this time. The renovation work was largely completed in 2007. The new building offers space for employees and conservation laboratories. There are also rooms for visiting scholars, especially from countries from which important cultural objects belong to the museum's collection. The expanded exhibition area is intended to present more exhibits and historical photos together again.
The collection
With over 500,000 exhibits in the densely packed exhibition hall, the museum is one of the most important anthropological collections in England .
The collection is organized by subject area and not by epoch or culture. This was intended to convey how different cultures dealt with the same problems or tasks at different times.
It includes tools and weapons, jewelry, musical instruments, sculptures, masks and textiles from all over the world. Numerous models in original size and scaled down show, for example, the cultural and historical development of boats. While the objects donated by Pitt Rivers were only 300 musical instruments, when Balfour died in 1939 they had already numbered 4,000. Today the important collection of musical instruments has grown to over 9,000 pieces. A collection of lamps from everyday use juxtaposes models from India with those from Uganda and Thailand . The collection also contains curious items, such as a glass bottle from a village in Sussex , in which a witch is said to be locked up.
The exhibits are very short and described on handwritten cards from the time the museum was built. Long descriptions are missing, but there is ample opportunity to take objects out of drawers and feel them. Probably because of this interactive design, the museum last won the The Guardian Family Friendly Museum Award in 2005 .
Web links
- Official website (English)
- Literature on the Pitt Rivers Museum in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ^ Philip Steadman, The Evolution of Designs , Cambridge et al. a. 1979, ISBN 0-521-22302-4 , pp. 87f and 10f.
- ^ Hélène La Rue: The “Natural History” of a Musical Instrument Collection. (BAL Cranstone, Steven Seidelberg (Ed.): The General's Gift: A celebration of the PRM Centenary, 1884-1984. ) In: Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford. Occasional Paper 3 , 1984, pp. 36-40, here p. 38
- ^ Instruments in the Pitt Rivers Museum Collections. Pitt Rivers Museum
Coordinates: 51 ° 45 ′ 33 " N , 1 ° 15 ′ 23" W.