Pitt Rivers Museum - University of Oxford

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
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