Pitt Rivers Museum - University of Oxford

More documents

Recommendations

Info

that had been on loan to the Museum of Oxford since 1978 was returned for inclusion in the Museum’s Community Music and Dance exhibition. Cataloguing As in previous years, a substantial amount of work was done on cataloguing collections and on enhancing pre-existing databases. This year much of this work was carried out as part of the preparations for moving collections from the Museum’s Banbury Road properties to the new extension and other repositories. Over the year, 1,977 new entries were added to the Museum’s object database and 123,058 enhancements made to existing records, the high number of the latter reflecting, amongst other things, work carried out by Alison Petch on the database, as part of the externally funded ‘Englishness’ project. Over the course of the year, 638 new entries were added to the photograph database and 20,441 enhancements made to existing database records. Conservation As for so many other of the Museum’s sections, this was an exceptionally busy year for conservation staff. The conservation studio in the new extension was opened in January 2007, with much of the furniture recycled from the previous studio in the Balfour Galleries on Banbury Road. The environmental monitoring system, from Hanwell, which had been used for more than ten years in the Museum and Banbury Road sites, was updated to include more data loggers to ensure that the environmental plant in the new extension is delivering the temperature and relative humidity required. The fine-tuning of the equipment—in consultation with the University’s Estates Office, which is responsible for running the environmental plant—continues. Monitoring of shock, vibration, and dust levels in the Museum finished as the building work came to an end. As it turned out, vibration levels were less during building work than they are normally during visits by schoolchildren and the general public. However, rises in the general level of dust were recorded. In addition, there were several unanticipated incursions of dust from an unsuspected under-floor pipe leading into the Museum. All 1,700 objects removed from display pending the construction of the new extension were checked and, where necessary, conserved to display standards. The galleries, as well as many of the items on open-display in the court, were given a ‘deep’ clean. Unwelcome visitors, in the form of clothing moths, were a problem this year, particularly for many of the textile objects on display. The number of moths found on the traps in the case containing North American clothing was sufficient to justify implementing the Museum’s full pest-management procedure, which involved removing all the clothing from the display, freezing it, and thoroughly checking each item before returning the material to the case. All displays with similarly vulnerable materials were checked each week. The Museum is not alone in suffering from this problem, and it is now thought that the incidence of clothes moth, which has escalated throughout the UK in recent years, may be connected to climate change. Conservation staff spent much time over the course of the year preparing the musical instrument and stone tool collections for removal from Banbury Road to a new repository in the Inorganic Chemistry building. The new repository had to be carefully redesigned to accommodate these collections, with their unique conservation demands. The space will also include study facilities for researchers. The conservation team also submitted extensive data relating to the environmental component of the Museum’s bid to the HLF. As usual, 10
conservation staff dealt with the conservation aspects of the Museum’s national and international loans. Even in such a busy year, training and the hosting of interns were not neglected. Following external assessment, both Heather Richardson and Gali Beiner became accredited conservators (ACR) through the Institute of Conservation. Novelette Aldoni Stewart from University College London spent three months at the Museum as an M.Sc. intern, during which she worked particularly on one of the boats on display in the court. An application to the HLF for a training internship in ethnographic conservation, to commence in the next reporting year, was successful. Designation Challenge Fund The Museum’s series of projects supported by the Designation Challenge Fund continued in this reporting year with the start of ‘Cutting Edge: Revealing Hidden Stories in a Cross- Cultural Collection of Arms and Armour’. Focused on the arms and armour collections on display in the upper gallery, the project has documentation, research, and interpretation components. Outputs from the project will include new collections based fact-sheets, a web gallery, improved text and captions in parts of the weaponry displays, audio-guide entries, and record-level enhancements to the catalogue databases. The project is being overseen by Julia Nicholson and Kate White and, as usual, benefits enormously from additional efforts from staff in all the Museum’s sections. The ‘Cutting Edge’ project is scheduled to end in March 2008 and its outcomes will be reported on in more detail next year. Andrew Mills took up the post of Research Officer in October 2006, his task being to undertake in-depth research on the objects on display in preparation for use by the Interpretation Officer, the latter post being filled by Helen Adams in January 2007. Also in January, Linda Mowat returned to the Museum as Senior Project Assistant to oversee the cataloguing aspect of the project, to which Elin Bornemann and Sian Mundell were seconded from the collections section. By the end of the reporting year, 6,974 artefacts had been examined and their associated records checked and enhanced. In addition, the cataloguing team have taken more than 3,000 photographs with a high-quality digital camera for use on the web gallery and as a permanent digital resource. A major component of the Interpretation Officer’s work involved consultation with stakeholders in order to produce new interpretive materials that are meaningful, relevant, and accessible. Formative evaluation, over a seven-month period, included more than fifty questionnaire-based consultations and fifteen focus groups. The focus groups were selected to represent the Museum’s current users and potential new audiences drawn from outreach sessions. The new audiences included local community groups, family groups, specialist interest groups, students, partner museums, and disability groups. The content of the sessions included guided tours, object handling, terminology testing, thematic discussions, and text and audio evaluation, as well as such group activities as ‘thought-showers’. RESEARCH AND SCHOLARSHIP The Museum’s staff continue to contribute to numerous research projects both within and outside the Museum. An indication of the range of research carried out during the year can be gleaned from the entries in Annex D: Staff Activities, Annex E: Staff Publications, and Annex F: Museum Seminars. 11
Page 2 and 3: © Pitt Rivers Museum, University o
Page 4 and 5: CONTENTS Director’s Introduction
Page 6 and 7: period of normal running. But I fel
Page 8 and 9: planned for the front of the OUMNH,
Page 10 and 11: goodwill towards the two museums am
Page 12 and 13: Special Exhibitions Treasured Texti
Page 16 and 17: Research Projects Research continue
Page 18 and 19: PADMAC is a multi-disciplinary, geo
Page 20 and 21: Association and the Museums, Librar
Page 22 and 23: ANNEX C STAFF (part-time staff are
Page 24 and 25: ANNEX D STAFF ACTIVITIES (INCLUDING
Page 26 and 27: Haas Ezzet continued to represent t
Page 28 and 29: Media, Culture and Sport’s Human
Page 30 and 31: Galleries Disability Association. I
Page 32 and 33: Clare Harris, ‘The Buddha Goes Gl
Page 34 and 35: Heather Richardson, ‘Not So Frien
Page 36 and 37: 9 March 2007: Bruce Bernstein (Smit

Pitt Rivers Museum - University of Oxford

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?