Pitt Rivers Museum - University of Oxford

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CONTENTS Director’s Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Access ........................................................................................................................... 3 Display ......................................................................................................................... 7 Collections Management and Care .............................................................................. 8 Research and Scholarship ........................................................................................... 11 Financial Success ....................................................................................................... 14 Annex A: Overview of the Museum .......................................................................... 16 Annex B: Acquisitions ............................................................................................... 17 Annex C: Staff List .................................................................................................... 18 Annex D: Staff Activities ........................................................................................... 20 Annex E: Staff Publications ....................................................................................... 26 Annex F: Museum Seminars ..................................................................................... 31 Annex G: James A. Swan Fund ................................................................................. 32 Annex H: Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum ............................................................ 32
DIRECTOR’S INTRODUCTION This reporting year was one of enormous activity, considerable achievement, and great sadness. The frenetic activity, of course, surrounded the construction of the Museum’s new £8,000,000 extension, which was completed during the year—and into which almost all staff had moved by the end of it. Indeed, pressure on space elsewhere within the University meant that an advance guard of staff moved into the new extension well before it was fully complete. I am very grateful to those colleagues for their equanimity in coping with noise, the comings and goings of workmen and—how can I put this while still making clear our rigorous adherence to health and safety regulations?—the odd trailing cable and less than fully completed section of flooring. One of the more complicated aspects of building the new extension was the creation of its intersection with the ‘old’ galleries, this breakthrough area being the last part to be completed. It was, however, wonderful to see for the first time the fresh views into the galleries from the new extension, and to be reminded that the latter is not only a wonderful new space for teaching and research but is itself an integral part of the Museum. At the same time, a good number of the displays around the intersection with the new extension—on all three floors—had to be dismantled during the construction works. Even with the energetic efforts of the Museum’s technical services team, it will take a good many months to restore them fully. A further call on staff time associated with building the new extension was created by the need to move the collections of musical instruments and archaeological materials from the Balfour Galleries and the house at 60 Banbury Road, premises that the Museum had agreed to relinquish in return for the final tranche of funding needed to complete the new extension itself. Additional space for these collections has been found close to the Museum’s main site, but the careful packing of thousands of musical instruments and tens of thousand of flints for transport to a new location was a major task, especially when done against the clock. I am especially grateful to the Museum’s collections staff, in particular to my colleagues Heather Richardson, Marina de Alarcón, and Zena McGreevy, for their devotion to this task, and for their insistence that this should be treated not as a mere removal job, but taken as an opportunity to upgrade the storage conditions and location records of these important collections, which as a result will soon be not only closer to hand but also more readily accessible for staff and visitors. The new extension is an exceptional facility, and it has been heart-warming to see its visitor research areas starting to come into operation, led by my colleagues Chris Morton and Philip Grover, who spent a good deal of time installing the Museum’s photograph and manuscript collections in the environmentally controlled repositories in the new extension. However, the new extension is not the final word so far as the need to renew the Museum’s buildings goes. Its completion throws into relief the inadequacy of the Museum’s entrance, with its obstructing 1960s exhibition gallery, which both blocks the entrance vista and confuses navigation within the building. The Museum’s environment has also long needed improving; no less do we need a dedicated in-gallery teaching space. I noted these shortcomings in my introduction to the previous annual report and also our intention to apply to the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) to remedy them. An application for £1,000,000 towards the £1,417,000 estimated costs of the project was submitted in January and I am delighted to be able to report that we heard in June that our application had been successful. In the last nine years, we have re-roofed the Museum, moved the textile repository and conservation laboratory three times, dispersed ourselves to allow the construction of the new extension, and now regathered ourselves in it. In an ideal world, we would now have had a 1
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Page 24 and 25: ANNEX D STAFF ACTIVITIES (INCLUDING
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Pitt Rivers Museum - University of Oxford

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