Oxford Trip - Pitt Rivers Museum

The Pitt Rivers Museum is an enourmous collection of artifacts gathered (or stolen) from all around the world in the 19th century by Augustus Pitt Rivers. He originally donated about 20,000 artefacts to the museum, but that has since expanded to over 500,000. 

There was way too much to look at in one go so I just made some observations about the way the collections were displayed. Firstly they were categorised by their place of origin, and displayed in large glass cabinets with little labels giving details such as the estimated time period and what the object's significance was to the respective culture. Some of these cabinets also had drawers underneath containing even more objects related to that theme, in an archive-like way.

I found it incredibly interesting but also overwhelming - there was so much stuff in a relatively small space, and there was no way I could get an appreciation for each little thing even though I would have liked to. 

Because my project is about collecting, I feel that I should take inspiration from the Pitt Rivers Museum in terms of curation, but I have to think about ways to do it on a much smaller scale, especially because I don't have that much stuff to display in the first place. It makes me consider whether I should display my objects in a classified way, which would be more informative, or allow more creative freedom and mix different themes and time periods together.

The artefacts that I felt most drawn too were generally stylised animal figurines, such as bone and wood carvings, but I also like the more anthropomorphic items like dolls and masks. These are some photos I took of the objects I liked...

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