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Pitt Rivers Museum

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meadowlark
meadowlark
First Reviewer
4 out of 5
Avg. Member Rating
4
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13
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Editor Pick

Oxford's Little Treasure Chest of Curiosities

  • October 10, 2009
  • Rated 5 of 5 by koshkha from Northampton, United Kingdom
Oxford's Little Treasure Chest of Curiosities

The Pitt Rivers Museum is a treasure chest of the weird and wonderful and should be a compulsory must-see place for every tourist visiting Oxford but sadly, it rarely is. Consequently 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 a place you need to know exists in order to find it. It's not widely publicised and 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 blousy Oxford University Museum. 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, even I didn't venture into the Pitt Rivers during my four years as a student in Oxford. So when I finally did go in, I was bowled over by what I found.

Lieutenant General Pitt Rivers was a true Victorian eccentric and a man with a voracious appetite for collecting. He didn't focus on specific areas or specialise in particular countries. Pitt Rivers collected just about anything and everything under a 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, brought it back to the UK and 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, the collection has expanded and today contains more than half a million pieces.

What makes the Pitt Rivers Museum so different from most is the way it displays its items. 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 Pitt Rivers does is display items according to what they are - not who made them or where they came from. So all the woven baskets go together, all the musical instruments are shown beside each other, jewellery 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 many thousands of miles apart, sometimes divided by many centuries all worked out different - or sometimes very similar - ways to solve the same problems. I love it!

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. One of my personal favourites 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!

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. 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.

The museum has recently built an extension to enable more of the collection to be exhibited was due to reopen earlier this year - I haven't been back yet but my husband dropped in a few months back and said they'd done a good job. 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, who I believe (though I've not read his books) has used the Pitt Rivers in some of his books.

From journal Oxford - It's Not All Morse and Posh Students

Pitts River Museum

  • February 17, 2005
  • Rated 3 of 5 by pickapineapple from New York, New York
The Pitts is definitely the strangest museum I've been to. My theory is that the museum was just a storage space attached to the Natural History Museum, but they then decided to put things in displays and call it a museum. It's a very cramped, eerie setup with multiple floors, everything from shrunken heads and medieval weaponry to a very large totem pole and clay pots. I recommend going, just because it's so strange.

From journal Remnants of England

Pitts River Museum

Pitts River Museum

A fascinating museum! I loved it! Situated about 10 minutes walk from the city center of Oxford, right next door to the Natural History Museum, it houses a most diverse collection of antiquities from all over the world: mummies, shrunken heads, a totem pole, model ships, armour and weapons, statues, charms and jewellery, to name but a few.

The cultures of Ancient Egypt, China, Japan and South America are all represented along with many others. It has some shocking artifacts accompanied by informative explanations. Photography without a flash is permitted, although light levels are low in order to preserve the delicate relics.

The gift shop has a good selection of books, replica artifacts and trinkets to purchase at a reasonable price. Entrance is free although donations can be made.

From journal A City Stop in Oxford

Editor Pick

Natural History Museum & Pitt Rivers Museum

  • December 4, 2002
  • Rated 5 of 5 by meadowlark from Boston, Massachusetts
Natural History Museum & Pitt Rivers Museum

Natural History Museum:

Even the outside of the Natural History Museum is impressively Victorian, but the high ceilings with the skylights are even more impressive once you step inside. Even those who are not huge biology buffs will enjoy examining the bones of many extinct animals (like dinosaurs and ice age mammals, many of which were found in Oxford) intermingled with stone statues of princes and scientists and stuffed animals from around the globe.

Some of the most humorous finds are the Alice in Wonderland exhibit in which all of Alice's little animal friends in the book are stuffed and displayed with quotes from the book. If that wasn't a little odd, check out the stuffed white rabbit who has a pocket watch attached to his paw (no joke!). A little bit further on there is a case with a large blue fish that was discovered deep in the ocean and is thought to be the only surviving dinosaur left. There is a stern condemnation of those who fish for it for display purposes, as this threatens the fish's survival. Just when you begin to think the museum is a bit hypocritical, it goes on to tell you this is actually a model and not the real thing...hmmmmm.

Pitt Rivers Museum:

The entrance is hidden away in the back of the Natural History museum. The museum is really one enormous room with a ceiling that reaches up three stories, with more exhibits on the first and second floors. The room is literally crammed with artifacts from around the world, all collected from the 19th to early 20th century and organized, surprisingly, by type of object, rather than what culture they came from. For example, there is a case of lanterns, stringed musical instruments, shrunken heads, model boats, smoking pipes, snow shoes, and so on. There are even much larger items including a boat suspended from the ceiling and a totem pole that reaches up both stories.

Although it can first seem a bit jumbled and crammed, the real treat of this museum is that the visitor is invited to feel the same sense of discovery that the collector who traveled all over the world to bring this stuff back to Oxford felt. There is so much to see and study; there are even drawers under the cases that you can pull out and see more artifacts. There are moral catches to the "old-world" charm. Remembering the effect that bringing these oddities back had on the imperialist zeal of the nation during the 19th century is sobering as well as noting the treatment of some of the cultures. For example, there is a mummified child pinned on the wall in one of the displays as if it were a butterfly that seriously questions the founders sense of taste. In a way, taking the good and the bad from this museum tells one as much about English academic culture during the time period as the cultures from which the artifacts came.

From journal Only in Oxford

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