Committee for the Pitt Rivers Museum as of 1 October 1994
The Vice-Chancellor (Dr Peter North)
The Senior Proctor (Dr P. Allen)
The Junior Proctor (Dr A. Aramides)
The Assessor (Dr J.M. Landers)
Mr John Flemming (Chairman)
Dr Brian Atkins
Dr R.H. Barnes
Dr J.A. Bennett
Dr Malcolm Coe
Professor Barry Cunliffe
Ms Joanna Innes
Dr Schuyler Jones
Dr Steve Simpson
Dr Donald Tayler
Professor Christopher White
The Pitt Rivers Museum
The Committee for the Pitt Rivers Museum, having received the following annual report from the Director, presented it as its report to Congregation.
Introduction
The high point of the Museum’s year was undoubtedly the reopening of the Upper Gallery on 17 May 1995. This was combined with the opening of a major special exhibition, Picturing Paradise, to make a truly memorable occasion. We were delighted that the Vice-Chancellor, Dr Peter North, the Ambassador for Western Samoa in Brussels, His Excellency Afamasaga Toleafoa, the Chairman of the Museums and Galleries Commission, Mr Graham Greene, and members of the Pitt Rivers family were all able to be with us. Meeting the combined deadlines made heavy demands on the staff, particularly those in the technical services department. I should like to take this opportunity to thank them and all the other staff who worked so hard to ensure that everything happened as it should.
The house at 64 Banbury Road is now in operation and, despite some continuing difficulties with the building and the operational problems of being yet further decentralized, is proving a real asset. The additional space for teaching activities has been eagerly awaited.
Plans are also taking shape to turn the enforced removal of the Conversation Laboratory and Textile Store from its present location, to make way for a new American Studies Centre, into something of lasting benefit to the Museum. The creation of a Collections Management Centre, which would embrace documentation, conservation, and collections study-space in one integrated unit, together with associated photographic and display activities, would fulfil a long-felt need for rationalization.
The Main Museum
The year was dominated by the work necessary to open the Upper Gallery on time. However, with Nick Gray’s help, work continued on redoing several of the musical instrument displays in the Court: the displays of bullroarers, flutes, jew’s harps, and musical bows were all reorganized.
Special Exhibitions in the Main Museum
From October to December 1994 the photographic exhibition Strange Territory was presented jointly at the Museum and at Oxford’s Museum of Modern Art. The work of Elizabeth Williams and Elizabeth Edwards, it explored the boundaries between ethnographic document and photographic expression. The exhibition was part of ‘Signals: Festival of Women’s Photography’, the Pitt Rivers Museum being the only ethnographic museum in the country to take part. A version of the exhibition was also shown at the Derby Fotofest in September and October 1995.
The exhibition Heights of the Heavens: Buddhism in Mongolia and Tibet closed in the New Year. It was followed by Kuba Textiles, which ran from 21 January to 29 April. Co-curated by Jeremy Coote and Simon Mee, a graduate student, the exhibition comprised colourful woven textiles from the Kuba Kingdom of Zaïre. It featured a selection of historic pieces from the Museum’s collections alongside a number of more recent pieces, mostly from the collection of Simon Mee himself, with three others kindly lent by Kim Sacks of Johannesburg. Thanks to generous sponsorship from Willis Corroon Fine Art Insurance Brokers, and the support of Amari Plastics plc, the Museum was able to publicize the exhibition very widely, as well as to produce an accompanying colour brochure and postcards. The publicity certainly seems to have been successful as the exhibition attracted a lot of interest, particularly from textile design students, both in Britain and abroad. Simon Mee and Jeremy Coote gave a Saturday morning talk about the exhibition to the Friends.
From May to September 1995 the Museum provided the only British venue for Picturing Paradise: Colonial Photography of Samoa 1875–1925. This major exhibition event was curated by the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum für Völkerkunde in Cologne and the Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona Beach, Florida. It was the product of a four-year research collaboration in which the Museum was closely involved. It brought together material from different collections across three continents and offered the Museum the opportunity to show some unique early photographs of Samoa from its own collections. The exhibition examined the role photography played in creating and perpetuating a vision of place and people that addressed the fantasy of viewers in the Euro-American world. As such it was an ethnography of photography rather than an ethnography of Samoa, and formed a case-study of a pattern that could usefully be pursued for other regions of the world. Elizabeth Edwards gave a Saturday morning talk about the exhibition to the Friends. Support for the exhibition was received from the Cultural Office of the London Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, Museum and Gallery Lighting Ltd, and the Friends.
Embroideries from Islamic Journeys opened on 23 September 1995. This exhibition comprised embroideries from the collection of Sheila Paine that feature in her book The Afghan Amulet. The exhibition was designed to take the visitor on the journey Sheila Paine herself took through Central Asia, the layout following her route, and included such items as a child’s jerkin covered with amulets, a decorative cover for a kalashnikov rifle, and brightly coloured marriage shawls.
Divers Memories, a further exhibition in the series organized by Chris Dorsett, was held at the Main Museum and the Balfour Building from 1 October to 31 December 1994. More than 70 works by contemporary artists were incorporated within the permanent displays, and a number of story-telling and other events were developed around them.
Special Exhibitions in the Balfour Building
The exhibition Myanmar Thabin-Ah-Son: Blessings and Objects from Burmese Musical Drama, devised and executed by Sandra Dudley, comprised displays about Burmese music and puppet plays. This occupied the temporary exhibition cases in the Music Makers Gallery and included the Burmese orchestra collected by Mr Portman in 1886. The gong and drum circles were moved to the Balfour Building from the Court of the Main Museum, special stands being made for them so that they can be moved out of the way when there are events in the gallery.
The exhibition The Rishmoo Collection: Kitty Lake’s Collection Representing her Travels to the Rishmoo Islands in 1927 was on display from 23 January to 17 April 1995. This craft exhibition of artefacts and memorabilia, ostensibly collected by the anthropologist Kitty Lake, quietly raised questions about the way objects in museums are viewed. Artist Sally Hampson was inspired by the Museum to create a culture, an environment, an alphabet, and a daily life for the islanders whom Kitty went to study. A final text panel made clear the fictional nature of the exhibition.
Other Exhibition Matters
The exhibition Wilfred Thesiger’s Photographs: A Most Cherished Possession continued its highly successful tour of East Africa and the Middle East under the auspices of the British Council. In all it was seen in nine venues. It returned home in March, and after a little refurbishment, departed for a tour of the United States, opening at the Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona Beach, Florida (which is organizing the tour on the Museum’s behalf) before travelling on to a number of other university-gallery venues.
Museum Events
The Museum featured in a programme in BBC TV’s ‘One Foot in the Past’ series, in which Loyd Grossman did an excellent job in talking about the Museum.
The usual series of term-time Pitt Stops continued throughout the year. The year began with a series of storytelling sessions to accompany the special exhibition Divers Memories. Vergine Gulbenkian delighted visitors with traditional legends relating to the objects on display, Chris Dorsett told stories about the installations in the exhibition, and Hélène La Rue told stories about the Museum itself, its collectors, and curators.
Hilary Term began with a performance at the Holywell Music Room by a company of traditional dancers from the Ainu Museum, Shiraoi (on a tour supported by the Japan Foundation and presented in association with Visiting Arts). Later, the performers were delighted to be able to visit the Museum and see some of the Ainu material on display.
There were particular highlights to Trinity Term’s programme. There was, for example, a Balinese dance workshop with I Nyoman Cahya, in which the public had the opportunity to learn the spectacular dance of the monkeys and demons from the Ramayana. In June, the Company of Storytellers gave a performance (sponsored by Southern Arts and Oxford City Council) of ‘Three Snake Leaves’ (a new work commissioned by the South Bank), in which they explored the uncharted and unfamiliar corners of the tales of the Brothers Grimm. The Company spent the following morning in the Museum running two storytelling workshops: one for adults, the other for children. In the afternoon, members of the Company joined with the group Moonrakers in a Pitt Stop of music and stories.
This year, National Music Day was extended to the whole weekend. The focus on the Saturday was on traditional stories from Burma, after which the participants made two large collages, drawing on themes and techniques from items in the special exhibition Myanmar Thabin-Ah-Son: Blessings and Objects from Burmese Musical Drama. On the Sunday the focus was on classical North Indian music, with tabla and voice workshops and demonstrations by Carolyne Howard-Jones, and Mishra and Pandit Sharda Sahai.
Visitor Numbers
The number of visitors to the Museum increased overall yet again to an annual total of 106,139. Within this overall figure, visits by members of educational groups totalled 18,295, of which 8,000 (an increased figure in comparison with previous years) were during public opening hours. Visitors to the Balfour Building totalled 4367.
The Visitor Survey
The 1995 visitor survey was based on two previous surveys to provide statistical continuity. The survey is as yet incomplete, and the following observations are not the product of a proper statistical analysis. They do, however, indicate the presence of some useful, even surprising, responses.
Asked if they felt the objects were grouped together in any particular way, many visitors used the words ‘type’ or ‘function’ in their answers, but others were ‘confused’, or thought the arrangement was by country, area or culture, or that there was no organization at all. This response might suggest that nearly half the Museum’s visitors are unable to make use during their visits of either the ideas or the language that underpin the displays. About one in seven of the respondents, representing about 15,000 visitors, were unaware that they had passed from the University Museum into the Pitt Rivers Museum and over half said they were unaware that there is a special exhibition gallery. (Visitors were interviewed after they had walked through the special exhibition area and round the Court.) Asked if they would like to see the displays redesigned a majority said, ‘No’, but a significant proportion said, ‘Yes’. Although visitors love the atmosphere and the unusual character of the displays, the low lighting and the old labels do present real difficulties.
What comes through clearly from a brief analysis of the completed questionnaires is the public’s desire to know more about the Museum and the collections, and a degree of frustration at the lack of ‘help’ provided, however much they enjoy the non-didactic atmosphere. Unfortunately, too many visitors do not discover the ‘aids’ on offer in the shop until it is too late. The survey suggests ways in which the Museum can improve provision for the public at a very basic level.
Museum Documentation and Records
During the year the computer database was transferred to a new system (Claris Filemaker). Experience so far has encouraged the hope that the new system will allow the accommodation on the database of more and better-organized information, as well as making it possible to provide access to it to a wider public.
Some progress has been made with the computerization of the object catalogue. Most significantly, Alison Petch is well advanced on the Founding Collection project. This is being funded by the Leverhulme Trust for three years from January 1995. The first task has been to enter details from the accessions books for the estimated 15,000 artefacts in the Museum’s founding collection. This data will be correlated with the relevant entries in Pitt Rivers’s own catalogue of part of his collection published in 1874, and with additional information in the delivery catalogues, in the catalogue index cards, and other sources. The work so far completed has already drawn forth some interesting information about aspects of the collection. It is clear that the project as a whole will result in much greater knowledge of the Museum’s founding collection.
Throughout the year, Sandra Dudley has been employed part-time to work on the Museum’s extensive Burmese collection. This comprises some 1400 artefacts, and ranks as one of the most important collections in Britain of Burmese hill and lowland material. Dudley has entered all the basic data on to the computer database as well as improving and expanding the documentation of important parts of the collection. In addition, Marie-Claire Bakker, another graduate student of the Museum, made an important contribution to the section’s work by accessioning and documenting the large collection of Slovakian and Moravian embroideries bequeathed to the Museum by Dr Lisbeth Gombrich.
Early in 1994 it was discovered that Beatrice Blackwood’s collection, from the 1920s and 1930s, of some 2500 children’s drawings from North America, the Solomon Islands, and England had never been accessioned. Thanks to the efforts of Marina de Alarcón records for this collection were added to the database, and it was then repacked to modern standards. The department also benefitted again from the valuable work of returning volunteer Bridget Heal for a brief period during the summer. The work of two other volunteers, Jo Smith and Simon Crook, was also much appreciated.
Due to the efforts of Pamela Wace (a Research Associate of the Museum) the Museum’s archaeological collections are receiving much long-overdue attention. In the last two years, assemblages from Belgium, Germany, Scandinavia, and Switzerland have been examined and re-categorized, while those from France, Italy, Malta, the eastern Mediterranean, and Japan are being worked on currently. Though they still require some editing, there are now computerized records for the Museum’s archaeological holdings from Germany, Scandinavia, Switzerland, and Japan. Much of this work is being carried out by students and volunteers in a series of individual projects, each covering a limited geographical area or cultural grouping. Among those who have worked with Pamela Wace, and to whom thanks are due, are Hamish Boyle, Debbie Crosby, Sabrina Dumont, Christine Finn, Marlene James, Fumiko Ohinata, Ken Summers, and Vicky Winton. In addition, Pamela has produced two valuable internal reports: ‘Catalogue of Continental European Artifacts of Neolithic and Bronze Age Date in the Pitt Rivers Museum (Balfour Building)’ and ‘How to Use the CARDBOX Databases for the Later Prehistoric European Collection’. There is, of course, much work still be done.
New Acquisitions
Bequests were as follows: Dr Lisbeth Gombrich (a collection of early twentieth-century Slovakian embroideries; 1995.11); Sir Charles Pawsey (a collection of Naga swords and textiles; 1994.45).
Donors were as follows: Anonymous (three Patagonian arrowheads; 1994.47 / an Arabian powder vessel; 1994.58 / two Asian printing-blocks; 1995.18 / a Nazca textile band; 1995.31); Giles Barber (a European amulet; 1995.2); Shahin Bekhradnia (a doll in Zoroastrian costume, from Iran; 1995.38); Jon Bennett (two Acholi bow-harps and a rebata; 1994.60); Brian Bone (a Catalonian duct-flute; 1995.23 / a collection of English fishing equipment; 1995.24 / plastic tokens from Lincoln College; 1994.53); Chen Ning Kang and Mu Lan Fu (a collection of Chinese embroideries; 1995.36); Michael Crouch (a Yemeni basket; 1995.34); Evan Davies (a spearhead and a collection of nets from the BaAka of the Central African Republic; 1995.30); Marina de Alarcón (four ‘love envelopes’ from Zimbabwe; 1995.41); Evelyn Mary Foxley and Dorothy Mary Meadows (a collection of Tanzanian craft items; 1995.21); St Frideswide’s Middle School (a time capsule to be opened in the year 2025; 1995.12); Nick Gray (hide and chisels for making shadow-puppets, from Bali; 1995.39); June Harrap (a painted textile from Mali; 1995.22); Sir John Johnston (a Liberian gown and a Benin figure; 1995.1); Margery Jones (two beaded dolls and other beadwork from Lesotho; 1995.13); Dr Schuyler Jones (a Hawaiian barkcloth; 1995.35 / a tea-bowl container and tea-bowl, a bread-basket and other material from Chitral and Peshawar in Pakistan; 1995.42); Judy Knight (a cloth, bell and horn from Rwanda; 1995.37); D. F. B. Le Breton (Zulu bracelets and rings, and two Mandinka dance-wands; 1994.49); J. S. Lightbody (a collection of Chinese silk slippers and purses and African bangles; 1995.25); Dominic Marsh (a working model in wood of a JCB, from Malawi; 1995.29); Michael Palin (a ‘Naga claw’; 1994.61); Alison Petch and Paul Goose (a fish-trap and a frog-trap from Thailand; 1994.44); Chris Phelps (an African spear head; 1995.15); Alethea Pitt (a cloth, bag and sari, all with gold brocade, from India; 1995.40); Thames Valley Police (a Dogon/Bamana figure found in the River Thames; 1994.46); PREMA/ICCROM (a Ghanaian scarf; 1994.52); Grace Smyly (an Asante stool and a collection of Asante goldweights and related apparatus collected by her father at the turn of the century; 1995.26); Kitty Southern (a Maori head-band; 1995.19); B.J.J. Stubbings (a Javanese shadow-puppet and a Tanzanian torque; 1995.27); Dr H.C. Swaisland (a hat, part of a previously donated Igbo costume, from Nigeria; 1994.57); Wilfred Thesiger (a Kuba raffia cloth and a silver crown from Ethiopia; 1995.5); E.A. Waldock (a Sierra Leonean hammock; 1995.16); Jeremy Warren (a Tanzanian mango-basket; 1995.6); Brian Winkfield (an English fly-reel; 1995.10); Ivan Wright (a British military fife; 1995.8); Dr David Zeitlyn (two Mambila miniature shields; 1995.9 / a Dogon goat-skin bag and a collection of Mambila dance-sticks, arrows and other material; 1995.33).
Loans (promised bequests) were as follows: R. J. MacRae (a large collection of British archaeological, mostly Palaeolithic, material; 1995.17).
Purchases were as follows: Shahin Bekhradnia (a collection of Tajikistani dress; 1994.50); John Harrison (two modern prints by Jody Wilson and Joseph Wilson, artists from the American Northwest Coast; 1994.59); Dr Schuyler Jones (Tibetan dZi beads; 1995.7); Pitt Rivers Museum shop (a Kenyan pellet-drum; 1994.48 / an African stringed instrument made from an olive-oil tin; 1995.14); the Tibet Shop, Copenhagen (an Ache Lhamo’s dancer’s costume from Tibet; 1995.4); Alona Yefimenko (a reindeer-skin dress from Russia; 1995.3)
Loans to other Museums
Three fish mascots lent to the National Fishing Heritage Centre, Grimsby in July 1994 for the exhibition Poseidon Experiment are due to remain on loan until January 1996. In June 1995 the model of the Mongolian temple Megjid Janraiseg was lent to the National Art Collections Fund for exhibition at the Fine Art and Antiques Fair at Olympia, London; it was returned safely later the same month. In September 1995 eleven early nineteenth-century scrimshaw items were lent to Hull Museums and Art Galleries for the exhibition Time on their Hands at the Town Docks Museum; they are due to be returned in December 1995. In September 1995, fifty-two photographs of mortuary ritual and monuments (on eight mounts) were lent to the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, Bradford for the exhibition The Dead; they are due to be returned in January 1996. In September 1995, a very rare flyer for Carl and Frederick Dammann’s Ethnological Gallery of Races of Men (1875) was lent to the Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona Beach, Florida for the showing there of the exhibition Picturing Paradise. It was then lent to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York for the showing there of the same exhibition.
Research Visits and Enquiries
Jeremy Coote, Julia Nicholson, and Marina de Alarcón of the Museum’s documentation section dealt with more than 300 written enquiries, more than 150 telephone enquiries, and more than 100 visits from researchers. They also dealt with a number of objects brought in for identification.
The enquiries received continue to range widely, from letters from GCSE students wanting advice on how to make a bracelet to e-mails from senior scholars with detailed questions about specific objects. This is an ever-increasing aspect of the department’s work, often entailing considerable research, which is often only done at the expense of other important tasks, such as progressing with the computerization of the catalogue and generally improving and updating the Museum’s object records. In order to improve methods for dealing with the more general enquiries, a ‘Researcher’s Box’ has been compiled. This contains copies of publications and documents containing information about the Museum and its founder and is intended to be a ‘first stop’ for researchers interested in the history of the Museum, its policies, and practices. The documentation section has benefitted from the expertise and assistance of Sandra Dudley, Alison Petch, Pamela Wace, and the Museum’s technical staff in meeting the increasing demand for information about and access to the Museum’s collections. As usual, the conservation department has dealt with access to material in the textile store.
There were 80 research visitors to the photograph and manuscript collections during the year, as well as innumerable postal, telephone, and e-mail enquiries from researchers all over the world. The Tibetan collections continue to be in especially high demand. The demands of enquirers (especially from the media) assuming that the photographic archive is a picture library, with commercial facilities and the ability to provide instant responses, is becoming an increasing irritant, deflecting precious staff time from the real business of the archives.
The conservation department dealt with more than 30 visitors. These included conservators at the University’s Bodleian Library, who came to look at the environmental monitoring system, researchers studying the reserve textile collection, and conservation students from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. In addition, the Department hosted an open day for the Friends of the Museum.
The music department dealt with 189 written, and numerous telephone, enquiries.
Archive Collections
It has been another extremely busy year for the archive collections. There has been increasing scholarly demand, continuing the trend of recent years, and there have been some notable accessions. Much energy has been devoted to applying for grant funding to create the new archive stores and research facilities at 64 Banbury Road. It is hoped that once this project is complete the collections will not only have more adequate storage space but also, at last, the infrastructure to enable some of the desperate cataloguing needs to be addressed. To date, serious under-staffing, under-funding, and increasing demand have taken their toll. Nevertheless, cataloguing work has continued, slowly but surely. Cataloguing of the Spencer Chapman collection, and of a number of smaller collections, was completed during the year and further inroads have been made into cataloguing the nineteenth-century collections and the collation of the Thesiger collection. Work on the Samoan exhibition (see above) resulted in greatly enhanced documentation on early Samoan photographs in the collection and revealed unique early material of major significance. Small amounts of conservation and preservation work have been done, especially on the Thesiger collection. However, in general terms, a coherent preservation programme, which at the same time would improve accessibility, remains severely hampered by lack of staff and facilities.
Audrey Smith and Ruth Wickett performed sterling work sorting, collating, and cataloguing the Penniman papers. Nick Blinco continued voluntary work on the Thesiger collection, and Zara Fleming provided valuable advice on the Tibetan collections. These contributions to the work of the department are much valued and appreciated.
Thanks are due to Ms Vicki Berger, Mr Bernard Drake, the Estate of the late Mrs E. Ettlinger, Mrs Catherine Fagg, Mrs Gillian Naish, and Mrs Lucy Williams for kindly donating manuscript and photographic material to the collection. A particularly noteworthy accession this year has been a collection of 174 photographs by Henry Martin, formerly belonging to David MacDonald, British Agent at Yatung, Tibet in the early twentieth century. They were generously donated by Mrs D. Cartwright, MacDonald’s last surviving daughter, and they considerably enhance the Museum’s already strong collection of Tibetan photographs. Some early photographs of Samoa and a small album from Nigeria were added to the collection by purchase.
Balfour Library
Veronica Lawrence reports that the gradual computerization of the Library has been progressing. Book orders are now entered on Oxford Libraries Automation Service (OLIS) by means of its Acquisitions Module. There are plans to replace the readers’ computer with a newer, more powerful model that will allow readers access to the University’s CD-ROM network as well as to the OLIS successor system (to be provided by GEAC and implemented in 1996). The reclassification of the Library into the Bliss classification scheme is progressing, as is the programme to bind loose periodicals.
Donations of books were received from the following individuals and institutions: Karel Arnaut, Mrs Pamela Ashby, the Ashmolean Library, Giles Barber, J. Trevor Barton, Hilde van Braeckel, Mary Brewster, Jeremy Coote, Fernando Dias, Paul Bucherer-Dietschi, the Estate of the late Mrs E. Ettlinger, Dr Bernhard Gardi, Mr Peter Gathercole, C. Krydz Ikwuemesi, the International Council of Museums, Dr Schuyler Jones, John Lowe, Ms Tamara Lucas, Mr S.K. Basu-Mallik, Hansjörg Mayer, Eglantina Monteiro, Ms Julia Nicholson, the Oriental Institute Library, Valda Rigg, Richard Rudgley, Philippa Russell, St Anne’s College, Inja Smerdel, the Takayama Institute of Historical Studies, Mrs Ione Tayler, Revd P.A.G. Westlake, Mrs Kate White, Dr Thomas Widlok, and Mrs Felicity Wood. These donations amounted to 97 books and pamphlets.
The Library has also purchased Macmillan’s thirty-four volume Dictionary of Art (to be published in 1996). As this was a very expensive venture (the cost was almost £4,000), the Library was very grateful for the large number of donations received, which enabled the purchase to take place. Donations towards the purchase price were received from Mr H. P. Bauer, Mrs June Bedford, Jeremy Coote, Ms Julia Cousins, Mr Malcolm Evans, the Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum, the Guides at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Professor Kenneth Kirkwood, Mrs J.M. La Rue, Dr Howard Morphy, Mrs Charlie Sanderson, Mr Paul Unsworth, Ms Janet Williams, Dr George and Mrs Felicity Wood, and Mr C.J. Woodford.
Mrs I. Tayler and Ms R. Page continued their fine work on the library desk, answering the queries of a readership whose undergraduate component has doubled since the last reporting period. The Library is grateful for assistance received from Mr Nick Blinco, who helped on the library desk during the absence of Ms Page during Hilary Term 1995. The Librarian plans to upgrade her qualifications as a registration candidate of the Library Association, which will enable her to gain chartered status. The volunteers from NADFAS (National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies) continued their excellent work in keeping the book stock in good repair. The Library also benefitted greatly from the help of two volunteers, Miss Honor Browning and Mrs Valerie Vowles, who carried out a stock-taking exercise.
Conservation
The newly established full-time conservation post was filled in October by Emma Hook, who has a degree in conservation from Durham University.
Work was completed on the material for the new displays in the Upper Gallery: this included bows, arm-guards, traps, fishing equipment and archaeological metalwork. Work on the model of the Mongolian Temple, which had been included in a special exhibition, was carried out—on both the temple itself and the figure inside—before it was placed on permanent display in the Court. A set of drums and two sets of gongs that had been on display in the Court were moved to the Balfour Building where work was carried out on them before they were displayed in the Music Makers Gallery. In the summer of 1995 work was carried out on material for a new boat display for the Court, and also for a display of Nuristan material for the Lower Gallery.
Advice and assistance was given with the display and lighting of each special exhibition. In December and January work was carried out for the Kuba Textiles exhibition, preparing the textiles and helping with the hanging (and later the dismantling) of the exhibition. Later in the year the material that had been shown in a special exhibition at the Balfour Building was examined and treated before being returned to storage, while the material for the Burmese exhibition was conserved. Assistance was also given with the lighting of the exhibition Picturing Paradise and with the preparation of material for the ‘Kitty Lake’ exhibition. Conservation staff were also heavily involved in the preparation of the exhibition Embroideries from Islamic Journeys.
The annual pest control survey was undertaken from the early spring of 1995 in all four sites where objects are stored. Surveys were also completed on the bark cloth (429 pieces) and non-textile garments (more than 270 pieces) in the Powerhouse. A survey of textiles in the reserve collection was begun. A condition survey of the plastic and part-plastic objects in the collection was also begun. Objects especially at risk are those made of cellulose nitrate (celluloid), some of which already show signs of disintegration. In addition, a condition survey of archaeological metalwork was begun in the summer of 1995. All these surveys are components of the Museum’s long-term re-storage plan.
In addition to the pest survey, a freezing programme for all new accessions is operated, as well as refreezing whenever necessary. The decision to use this method of pest control appears, on the whole, to be effective and is infinitely preferable to the use of toxic pesticides. In addition, the removable parts of display cases are also frozen.
The Hanwell system for environmental monitoring has proved to be extremely effective and flexible. We have not only more data than before, but it is also more accurate. Our understanding of how the main building behaves has improved, and conservation staff have been able to make recommendations regarding the heating, humidifying, and lighting of the Museum. Comparing data from inside and outside the Museum, it is clear that the building is currently unable to maintain a stable environment, probably due to the glass roof. A fully insulated roof would undoubtedly improve matters, for both the objects and visitors.
The rewiring in the Court and Galleries has been used as an opportunity to correct lighting to appropriate levels. Conservation staff have been involved in the consultation process for the lighting in the Court, and in adjusting the new track and case lighting in the Upper and Lower Galleries.
The XRF (X-ray fluorescence) facility at the Archaeological Research Laboratory was used for elemental analysis of Chinese tinder pouches from the reserve collection. We are grateful to Ms Helen Hatcher for all her help with this. Conservation staff have also begun to use tests designed at the British Museum to evaluate display materials.
Sophie Younger, a textile conservator at the Burrell Collection, worked in the laboratory for several weeks. Andrew Chang, a conservator from Hong Kong studying at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, worked in the laboratory for the summer in order to gain experience working on ethnographic wooden material. In addition, a number of volunteers have worked in the laboratory. Over the summer, Beverley Lear, one of the Museum’s graduate students, re-packed the Asian fibre shoes. Geoffrey Fouquet assisted with preparing the loan to Bradford, cutting all the mounts and mounting the photographs. We are grateful to all the above for their valuable contribution to the work of the department.
Photography
Much external work was carried out during the year, in addition to the ongoing documentation photography of objects selected for display in the Upper Gallery. An interesting project involved digitizing almost 100 Dufaychrome transparencies from the Spencer Chapman collection. (Dufaychrome was one of the earliest commercial colour processes utilizing an integral ruled-screen tricolour filter.) The originals were scanned on to Kodak Photo CD. With the appropriate computer software these images can now be viewed, printed, retouched, and manipulated, without affecting the original material in any way. It is hoped that it will ultimately be possible to use the same process on other images in the collections. A Nikon F90 camera system was purchased to replace the ageing Olympus equipment, which has provided sterling service but is now showing its age.
Shop Sales
The shop tills passed their combined target figure of £60,000 (turnover £54,796 net). This represented a 6.44% increase on the previous year, which was surprising given the slow start in the autumn. (It is noticeable that when the Museum is crowded the visitor spend decreases, indicating that sales are lost due to the crush in the shop area.) The increase was mainly due to postcard sales, which were up by £1,800 (over 34,000 cards sold). For the first time, the ‘Shrunken Heads’ postcard was outsold, by two ‘mask’ postcards. The new wallet containing 10 ‘mask’ postcards proved very popular and sold extremely well to the many GCSE, A-level, and art-school students visiting the Museum. These latter cards are also distributed nationally by a firm producing educational packs for schools. More than £20,000 worth of books were sold. New University trading requirements mean that the shop is for the first time covering all its own direct costs, including salaries. A net profit of £8,500 was generated for the Museum.
Publications
It has been a good year for the Museum’s publishing programme. The Pitt Rivers Museum: A Souvenir Guide to the Collections won the Gulbenkian award for the best museum publication for adults. Julia Cousins, the author, received the award at a reception at the National Portrait Gallery in November.
The long-awaited reissue of Anthony Baines’s Bagpipes was published during the year in a new edition, prepared by Hélène La Rue, incorporating all the addenda and corrigenda of previous editions as well as the author’s additions to the text and bibliography, and a new index. Since it was first published in 1960, Bagpipes has been the best-selling volume in the Museum’s series of Occasional Papers on Technology, and it is still much in demand.
Two new Museum booklets were published: Textiles: An Introduction, by Linda Mowat, and The Pangsha Letters, originally written by J.P. Mills in the field and edited for publication by his daughter, Geraldine Hobson.
Teaching and Examining
Jeremy Coote lectured on African art and aesthetics to the students reading for the Museum’s M.St. in Ethnology and Museum Ethnography.
Elizabeth Edwards continued giving lectures, seminars, tutorials, and supervisions in critical history and theory of still photography within visual anthropology, as well as contributing to the teaching of the ‘Museum Studies’ option on the M.St. She also gave talks to groups of students from the University of Reading and the London Institute.
Chris Gosden lectured on undergraduate and M.St. courses, contributing to the series ‘World Archaeology’, ‘Regional Studies in Material Culture’, and ‘People, Environment and Culture’.
Schuyler Jones gave lectures in the ‘People, Environment and Culture’ series. He gave classes for students taking the ‘Museum Studies’ option, held tutorials for undergraduates and supervised a number of graduate students, including those reading for the M.St., M.Phil., and D.Phil. degrees.
Julia Nicholson gave a seminar on the Museum’s documentation systems to the M.St. students.
Howard Morphy lectured on undergraduate and M.St. courses. He organized the ‘Ethnology’ option for undergraduates in Geography, as well as being the assessor for it, and gave tutorials in Human Sciences. He continued as Senior Tutor at Linacre College and as Director of Studies for Archaeology and Anthropology at St Peter’s.
Derek Roe offered his usual courses on ‘Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Archaeology’ for taught-course graduate students, and on ‘Selected Topics in Palaeolithic Archaeology’ for undergraduates, together with lectures and classes specially organized for first-year undergraduates in Archaeology and Anthropology. He also provided special lectures and displays of British Palaeolithic material for parties of archaeology students from a variety of institutions, including groups from Reading University, Oxford Brookes University, and Erlangen University, Germany. He examined one Ph.D. thesis during the year, for Cambridge University.
Donald Tayler again served as Chairman of Examiners for the M.St. and M.Phil. in Ethnology and Museum Ethnography, as Assessor for Geography Mods, and as coordinator for papers in both Archaeology and Anthropology Mods and Human Sciences Prelims. As Director of Studies and Lecturer at St Hugh’s, he undertook undergraduate admissions and the assessment of candidates for postgraduate research scholarships and fellowships.
Students
Jeremy Avis and Tina Stoecklin carried out fieldwork, in the Cameroon and in Kalifi, Kenya respectively. Ruth Charles, who successfully completed her doctoral thesis and took up a Randall MacIver Studentship at The Queen’s College in September 1994, is now engaged on postdoctoral research and based at the Quaternary Research Centre.
The Donald Baden-Powell Quaternary Research Centre
During the course of the year, the Museum’s facilities at 64 Banbury Road came into full use. Dr Chris Gosden, successor to Dennis Britton, has moved from No. 60 to a room there. Dr Peter Mitchell, the replacement for Ray Inskeep after a year’s hiatus, will also be based there. This will leave Dr Roe, Honorary Director of the Centre, as the only resident member of the archaeological teaching staff. However, the further integration of Ethnology and Prehistory is reflected in the allocation of a room at No. 60 to Dr Hélène La Rue, Curator of Music. It has also been possible to assign a room, at least temporarily, to those working on the Stanton Harcourt (‘Oxford Mammoths’) project. They are devoting increasing attention to the publication of their long years of rescue work at the site, the days of availability of the deposits being numbered as the gravel pit reaches the end of its working life. The substantial grant to the project from A.R.C. (a part of the Hanson group of companies), announced last year and worth about £27,000, has now become a reality, enabling St Cross College to offer a Research Fellowship to Dr Kate Scott and membership of the College to Mrs Christine Buckingham. This will assist the completion and publication of the work.
The Centre also welcomes the regular presence of Dr Pamela Wace, who is assisting Dr Gosden with the curation of the European Prehistoric collections and is also heavily involved with tutorial teaching for undergraduates reading for the degree in Archaeology and Anthropology. Dr Bill Waldren, Research Associate at the Centre, has continued his fieldwork in Mallorca and Menorca, spending the summer months in the field there as usual and the winter months in Oxford, working on the finds and publications. We were delighted that the Museum marked the 80th birthday of R.J. MacRae—tireless worker on the Palaeolithic of the Upper Thames Valley and friend and helper of so many students and others at the Centre since its establishment—by making him an Honorary Curator.
Long-term visitors to the Centre this year included Professor Michael Walker of Murcia University, Spain, during Michaelmas Term. This visit was organized under the terms of the British Council Acciones Integradas grant, which supported Dr Roe’s own visit to Spain in 1993 to participate in the Orce research project. Other members of the Spanish Orce team made a brief visit to Oxford, also during Michaelmas Term.
Ms Alice Gorman, from the University of New England, Armidale, Australia worked at the Centre throughout the year, studying glass artefacts in the collection of the Museum, using microwear analysis and other techniques. She helped Mr John Mitchell, a Research Student at the Centre, organize a highly successful one-day international meeting in February on topics related to microwear work and the study of prehistoric stone tools. This meeting combined the resources of Nos. 60 and 64 Banbury Road. Mlle Sabrina Dumont, from the University of Paris–Sorbonne, has also been working at the Centre for the whole year as a visiting graduate student.
During the 1995 Long Vacation the long-lost and much missed flint-knapping area was re-established in the grounds of No. 64, to general satisfaction. Meanwhile, for much of the year No. 60 itself has remained under intermittent siege by various apparently independent teams of workmen. Just when we thought everything conceivable had been done to the building, someone decided that one of the chimneys (which admittedly had a plant growing out of the top of it, but some people rather liked that) needed reconstructing, and the turret which is such a distinctive feature of the front elevation was also adjudged to be in need of repair. This work too has now been completed; the building’s other chimneys are perhaps safe, or else are merely being held in reserve as a future reconstruction project if things become too settled.
Other Staff Activities
Jeremy Coote served as the Museum’s nominee on the Oxford Visual Arts Joint Planning Committee. He lectured to students at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art and to members of the Banbury Fine Art Society. He advised the National Art Collections Fund on applications for funding and the Crafts Council on their African Metalwork exhibition and the accompanying catalogue. He continued his work as Editor of JASO: Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, resigning from the post at the year’s end and taking up the post of Associate Editor. In early 1995 he completed his work as Area Editor for Africa and Oceania at The Dictionary of Art. He has been appointed by DeAgostini Editions as editorial adviser for the art of Africa and Oceania for a major new introductory book.
Elizabeth Edwards gave lectures and seminars in Barcelona, London, Birmingham, Oxford (Museum of Modern Art), Boston (Photographic Resource Centre, Boston University), and Southampton. She attended the 1994 Oracle conference for senior photography curators in November, convened the Ethnography session of the Museums Association conference in Leicester and the Museum Ethnographers Group annual conference, which was held at the Museum and focused on issues raised by the Picturing Paradise exhibition. She continued to serve on the editorial board of History of Photography, on the Photographic Committee of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and as Chair of the Museum Ethnographers Group. She was appointed to the Museums and Galleries Expert Advisory Panel on Curatorial Standards in Photography and joined the Oxford Visual Arts Panel. Anthropology and Photography 1860–1920, edited by Elizabeth Edwards on behalf of the Royal Anthropological Institute and published by Yale University Press in 1992, won nomination and commendation for the Krasna Krautz Award, an international prize for excellence in writing on photography. She received the award at a ceremony in London in January. She was appointed to the editorial board of The Encyclopaedia of the Pacific Islands (to be published by Hawaii University Press).
In August Chris Gosden carried out, with Gary Lock of the Institute of Archaeology, excavations on and around the Iron Age hillfort at Uffington in South Oxfordshire. The project also focuses on present-day attitudes to, and recent changes in, the local agrarian landscape. He continues to write up the results of the fieldwork carried out in both the New Britain and New Ireland provinces of Papua New Guinea, as well as more general works on the Pacific, in addition to writing up the results of his fieldwork in Turkmenistan. He is also coordinating work on the Museum’s archaeological holdings from Europe, Japan, and Africa. He gave papers in Poznan, Bradford, London, and Sheffield. He was external examiner at the Institute of Archaeology in London. He remains a member of the editorial boards of World Archaeology and Archaeology in Oceania, and of Cambridge University Press’s ‘World Archaeology’ series.
In November Emma Hook attended a conference in London on adhesives, organized by the Textile Section of the United Kingdom Institute for Conservation (UKIC). She also attended a conference held at the Victoria & Albert Museum in March 1995 on Planning for Disasters. In Edinburgh in April she took part in the Plastics Conservation Workshop hosted by the Scottish Society for Conservation and Restoration. She attended a Conservation open day at the British Museum, visited the new Oxfordshire County Council store at Standlake, and viewed the conservation work being carried out on wall-paintings at Cogges Manor Farm. In July she took over the running of the Oxford Conservators Group.
Having been given his second term of sabbatical leave in twenty-five years, Schuyler Jones drove to Denmark in March to resume his research on the Tibetan collections in the National Museum. While there he participated in two conferences: one on Asian Nomads, held at the Institute of Anthropology at Copenhagen University; the other on Hindu Kush studies, held at Moesgaard, University of Aarhus. Toward the end of June he met up with Mr Bob Rivers, Head Technician at the Museum, who had driven over to Denmark to pick up the dog sledges collected in Greenland on the Director’s 1993 expedition. Together they returned to Oxford at the end of June. In July the Director flew to Australia to give the keynote address at the meeting of the Council of Australian University Museums and Collections (CAUMAC). In the course of his visit he gave lectures in Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, Townsville, and Darwin, and visited a number of museums in those cities. He continued to serve as English Language Editor for various volumes published as part of the Carlsberg Foundation’s Nomad Project. He continued to serve as a member of the editorial board of the Journal of the History of Collections.
At the beginning of the year, Hélène La Rue was awarded a Mellon Research Fellowship to research in the archives of the Musical Instrument Division of the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art in New York. She spent a month working in New York and was fortunate enough to meet the great grandchildren of the Mrs Brown who gave the original gift of musical instruments to the Museum. Through them, and their family archive, she discovered new material about several of those who gave instruments, both to the Met and to the Pitt Rivers Museum. Throughout the year she continued to act as the Chairman of the Musical Collections Forum. She also continued to serve on two working groups (for musical instrument conservation and classification) of the International Committee of Museums (ICOM) International Group (CIMCIM), and in April lectured on a special course, organized by and held at the University of Barcelona, exploring the role of the museum in preserving, recording, and teaching about traditional music.
With Alison Petch and John Mulvaney, Howard Morphy completed and submitted to the publishers an edited collection of the letters written by F. J. Gillen to W. Baldwin Spencer, which are held in the Museum’s archive collections. With Marcus Banks he prepared for publication a collection of essays on visual anthropology. He also wrote the final report on his ESRC-funded research project in North Queensland. He has also been working on a project to develop a new museum and research centre in Charlottesville, Virginia. He continued as a member of the quality assessment panel for anthropology of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). He has also taken up the post of chairman of the Esperanza Fund for Anthropological Research. During the year he gave papers at conferences in Alice Springs, Berlin, and Oxford. He continued to be the external examiner for the B.Sc. at University College London, as well as for the MA in the Anthropology of Art and the MA in Museum Studies there.
Derek Roe was an invited speaker at a number of meetings and conferences. These included the Southern Rivers Project meeting, in London in October; a one-day symposium on ‘Microwear Analysis and Lithic Technology’, at Oxford in February; the British Museum ‘Palaeolithic & Mesolithic’ day meeting, in March; and the ‘International Conference on Hominids and their Environment in the European Lower and Middle Pleistocene’, at Orce, Spain in September. At the latter he was a member of the scientific committee, chairman of a session, participant in a round-table discussion, and a member of the panel of speakers at the closing ceremony. He made study visits to the Palaeolithic sites of Pontnewydd Cave, Stanton Harcourt, and Boxgrove during the course of their excavation seasons. He continued his memberships of the advisory committee to the Department of Archaeology and Numismatics of the National Museum of Wales and of the scientific advisory panel of the Irene Levi-Sala CARE Foundation, which funds archaeological projects relating to Israel. He remained on the editorial boards of Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society and Review of Archaeology, and on the editorial advisory boards of World Archaeology and L’Anthropologie, adding as a new commitment membership of the advisory board of Geoarchaeology.
In November Lorraine Rostant attended a conference in London on adhesives organized by the Textile Section of the United Kingdom Institute for Conservation (UKIC). In Edinburgh in April she took part in the Plastics Conservation Workshop hosted by the Scottish Society for Conservation and Restoration. She attended a conservation open day at the British Museum, visited the new Oxfordshire County Council store at Standlake, and viewed the conservation work being carried out on wall-paintings at Cogges Manor Farm.
Birgitte Speake gave several talks during the year. She gave a general talk to conservation students at De Montfort University on the conservation of ethnographic materials. She gave a paper at the Museum Ethnographers Group conference on the conservation of material for the new displays in the Upper Gallery. She also gave a talk in the lab to the Friends and spoke to the Oxford Conservators Group about the Getty Pest Control course. She attended a conference on ‘Resins Ancient and Modern’, and in Aberdeen in September she attended an Ethnographic Conservation Workshop. She attended a Conservation open day at the British Museum, visited the new Oxfordshire County Council store at Standlake, and viewed the conservation work being carried out on wall-paintings at Cogges Manor Farm.
Staff Publications
Jeremy Coote, Review of Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, edited by Francesco Pelizzi (New York, 1994), in The Times Literary Supplement, no. 4782 (25 November 1994), p. 31.
Jeremy Coote (with Simon Mee), Kuba Textiles at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum (1995).
Jeremy Coote, Review of Imagery and Creativity: Ethnoaesthetics and Art Worlds in the Americas, edited by Dorothea S. Whitten and Norman E. Whitten (Tucson, 1993), in American Ethnologist, Vol. XXII, no. 2 (February 1995), pp. 205–6.
Jeremy Coote, ‘Indiscipline and Indigestion: A Reply to Whitten and Whitten’, in American Ethnologist, Vol. XXII, no. 4 (August 1995), pp. 615–6.
Jeremy Coote, ‘Traditions of Transformation: An Introduction to the Art of African Metalwork’, in African Metalwork, London: Crafts Council, pp. 7–23.
Julia Cousins, ‘ “But You Aren’t Going to Change It All, Are You?”: Refurbishment of the Pitt Rivers Museum’, in Museum Management and Curatorship, Vol. XIII, no. 4 (1994), pp. 416–20.
Elizabeth Edwards, ‘Visualising History—Diamond Jenness’s Photographs of D’Entrecasteaux Islands, Massim, 1911–1912: A Case Study in Re-engagement’, Canberra Anthropology, Vol. XVII, no. 2 (1994), pp. 1–26.
Elizabeth Edwards, From Negative Stereotype to Positive Image, Bristol: Watershed Media Centre (1995).
Elizabeth Edwards, ‘Visualität und Geschichte: Eine Betrachtung zweier Samoa-Fotographien von William Acland, Kapitän der Royal Navy’, in Bilder aus dem Paradies: Koloniale Fotografie aus Samoa 1875–1925, edited by Jutta Beate Engelhard and Peter Mesenhöller, Marburg: Jonas Verlag (1995), pp. 111–18; also in English as ‘Visuality and History: A Contemplation on Two Photographs of Samoa by Capt. W. A. D. Acland Royal Navy’, in Picturing Paradise: Colonial Photography of Samoa, 1875–1925, edited by Casey Blanton, Daytona Beach: Southeast Museum of Photography (1995), pp. 49–58.
Elizabeth Edwards, ‘Photography in Ethnographic Museums: A Reflection’, Journal of Museum Ethnography, no. 7 (May 1995), pp. 131–39.
Elizabeth Edwards, Review of Temps d’ahir: Arxiu d’Etnografia I Folklore de Catalunya, 1915–1930 (an exhibition held at the Sala Catalunya de Fundacio ‘La Caixa’, Barcelona, 7 October 1994 to 8 January 1995), in Journal of Museum Ethnography, no. 7 (May 1995), pp. 140–42.
Elizabeth Edwards, ‘Imaginary Homecoming: Photographs of Jorma Puranen’, Social Identities, Vol. I, no. 2, pp. 317–22.
Chris Gosden (with Lesley Head), ‘Landscape: A Usefully Ambiguous Concept’, Archaeology in Oceania, Vol. XXIX, no. 3 (October 1994), pp. 113–16.
Chris Gosden (with Christina Pavlides), ‘Are Islands Insular? Landscape vs. Seascape in the Case of the Arawe Islands, Papua New Guinea’, Archaeology in Oceania, Vol. XXIX, no. 3 (October 1994), pp. 162–71.
Chris Gosden (with Christina Pavlides), ‘35,000 Year Old Sites in the Rainforests of West New Britain, Papua New Guinea’, Antiquity, Vol. LXVIII (1994), pp. 604–10.
Emma Hook (with Lorraine Rostant), ‘UKIC Textiles Section: Adhesives Forum II’ (Conference Report), SSCR Journal: The Quarterly News Magazine of the Scottish Society for Conservation and Restoration, Vol. VI, no. 1 (February 1995), p. 18.
Hélène La Rue (with others), Standards in the Museum Care of Musical Instruments (Museums and Galleries Commission Standards 5), London: Museums and Galleries Commission (1995).
Howard Morphy, ‘Aesthetics across Time and Space: An Anthropological Perspective’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, Vol. IV, no. 2 (1994), pp. 257–60.
Howard Morphy, ‘Landscape and the Reproduction of the Ancestral Past’, in The Anthropology of Landscape: Perspectives on Place and Space, edited by Eric Hirsch and Michael O’Hanlon, Oxford: Clarendon Press (1995), pp. 184–209.
Howard Morphy, ‘Aboriginal Art in a Global Context’, in Worlds Apart: Modernity through the Prism of the Local (ASA Decennial Conference Series—The Uses of Knowledge: Global and Local Relations), edited by Daniel Miller, London: Routledge (1995), pp. 211–39.
Derek Roe (co-editor, with Mary Leakey and others), Excavations in Beds III, IV and the Masek Beds, 1968–1971, Volume 5 of Olduvai Gorge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1994).
Derek Roe, ‘A Metrical Analysis of Selected Sets of Handaxes and Cleavers from Olduvai Gorge’ in Leakey and Roe (see above), pp. 146–234.
Derek Roe, ‘Summary and Overview’, in Leakey and Roe (see above), pp. 299–309.
Derek Roe, ‘The Palaeolithic Archaeology of the Oxford Region’, Oxoniensia, Vol. IL, pp. 1–15.
Derek Roe (with others), ‘Présence d’industries lithiques dans le Pléistocène inférieur de la région d’Orce (Grenade, Espagne): Quel est l’estat de la question?’, Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences, Paris, series IIa, Vol. CCCXXI, pp. 71–8.
Derek Roe, ‘The Orce Basin (Andalucía, Spain) and the Initial Palaeolithic of Europe’, Oxford Journal of Archaeology, Vol. XIV, no. 1, pp. 1–12.
Derek Roe, Review of In Search of the Neanderthals: Solving the Puzzle of Human Origins, by Christopher Stringer and Clive Gamble (London, 1993), Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, Vol. LX, pp. 451–2.
Lorraine Rostant (with Emma Hook), ‘UKIC Textiles Section: Adhesives Forum II’ (Conference Report), SSCR Journal: The Quarterly News Magazine of the Scottish Society for Conservation and Restoration, Vol. VI, no. 1 (February 1995), p. 18.
Donald Tayler, ‘Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff’ (Obituary), Anthropology Today, Vol. X, no. 6 (1994), pp. 19–20.
Donald Tayler, ‘A Temple of the Muses or a Forum for Debate? Oxford’s Anthropological Collection’, Anales del Museo Nacional de Antropologia (Madrid), Vol. I, pp. 29–50.
Grants and Donations
The following grants and donations were received during the year. From the Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund: £48,000 for the installation of fibre-optic lighting in the cases in the Court of the Main Museum. From the Leverhulme Trust: a grant of £73,898 over three years to work on ‘The Recovery and Historical Positioning of the Original Pitt Rivers Collection’. From the W. H. Delafield Charitable Trust: £3,000 for the care, maintenance, and display of the collections.
James A. Swan Fund
This research fund, established out of a bequest by the late J. A. Swan, is for research work, either at the Museum or sponsored by the Museum, on the archaeological, historical, physical, and cultural nature of the Batwa, Bushmen and Pygmy peoples and their prehistoric antecedents in Africa. Grants are awarded primarily for fieldwork and the publication of such work. The fund is administered by the Director of the Museum in consultation with the Professor of Biological Anthropology and the Professor of Social Anthropology. Total funds as of 1 August 1994 were £34,396. During the period from 1 August 1994 to 31 July 1995 income of £17,168 was received and grants totalling £14,580 were made, leaving a balance of £36,984.
Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum
In October the lecture ‘Mongolia: A Revival of Buddhism’ was given by Sue Byrne, coordinator of the Buddhism in Mongolia Programme for the Tibet Foundation, to complement the Heights of the Heavens exhibition. The Beatrice Blackwood lecture was given in November and was very well attended. The lecture, entitled ‘The Shaman’s Quest in Africa’, was given by I. M. Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics, and was preceded by refreshments. The Friends are most grateful to the Administrator of the Department of Inorganic Chemistry for allowing the use of the lecture theatre free of charge.
In December the Friends were treated to a special private view of the new displays in the Upper Gallery, during which there were a series of short talks about the displays by Geraldine Hobson and Colin Langton (of the Friends) and John Todd and Alison Petch (of the Museum staff). Christmas refreshments were served, of course, and there was a quiz about mystery items and a raffle.
In the spring and summer of 1995 the lectures were as follows: ‘Coiled Pots: Traditional and Contemporary Ways’, given by the potter Betty Blandino; ‘Development of Writing and Written Records in Mesopotamia’, given by Stephanie Dalley, Senior Research Fellow at the Oriental Institute; ‘The Nagas: Tribal People of North-East India’, given by Geraldine Hobson; ‘First People, Last Islands: Survival of Pre-Columbian Canoes and Maritime Routes in the Eastern Caribbean’, given by Lennox Honychurch, a research student at the Museum.
The Friends enjoyed three Saturday morning events during the year. In February, Jeremy Coote and Simon Mee gave a gallery talk on the Kuba Textiles exhibition. In May, two groups were shown around the Museum’s Conservation Department in the company of Birgitte Speake, Lorraine Rostant, and Emma Hook. In June, Elizabeth Edwards gave a gallery talk on the exhibition Picturing Paradise. The Friends are most grateful to these members of staff, who not only gave up their Saturday mornings but also got out special extra items for Friends to see. Friends also enjoyed attending the private views of the exhibitions Heights of the Heavens, Divers Memories, Strange Territory, and The Rishmoo Collection, and, most of all, the joint opening of Picturing Paradise and the Upper Gallery.
The AGM in June was held this year at the Balfour Building. It was announced that the membership stood at 191. Stepping down from the Friends’ Council this year were Sally Owen and Elena Kingdon. Sally, a founder member of the Friends, was Hon. Secretary for the first seven years, followed by a further four years as a member of Council. Elena served on the Council for three years, during two of which she was Hon. Programme Secretary. The following were welcomed as new members of council: José Allen, Joy Hendry, and Joyce Weil. It was reported that although the Friends often helped with the purchase of objects for the Museum this year they had supported other projects: £200 had been used to buy cups, saucers, and equipment as a ‘housewarming’ present for 64 Banbury Road, £100 had been used to help bring the exhibition Picturing Paradise to Oxford, £50 had been spent on spring bulbs (with musical connections!) for the Baines Music Garden at the Balfour Building, and £116 had been contributed to the purchase price of The Dictionary of Art (the cost of one volume). The business finished, Friends gathered round, drinks in hand, to watch Nick Barton of Oxford Brookes University give an excellent demonstration of flint knapping.
Friends have continued to help with the Education Service and there has also been work on library projects. David Paskett’s line drawing of the model of the Mongolian Temple was used for the poster for the Heights of the Heavens exhibition. Geraldine Hobson edited the ‘Pangsha letters’ of her father J. P. Mills, which were published by the Museum. An interview with Geraldine about Nagaland, J. P. Mills, and the Museum was broadcast on Radio Oxford in two, twenty-minute parts. It is pleasing to see that the ‘running men’ logo, the result of a competition sponsored by the Friends, is now much used by the Museum, on everything from fax paper to coffee mugs! Individual Friends made further contributions towards the purchase of The Dictionary of Art, amounting to seven more volumes.
In late 1994 Felicity Wood and Christine Wrigley attended an area meeting of the British Association of Friends of Museums (BAFM) at the Chiltern Open Air Museum. Meeting their counterparts from the Ashmolean, they decided to form an Oxford BAFM Group. This group has met informally, once a term, since then, and now also includes a representative from the Friends of Archives and Museum in Oxfordshire (FAMOS). In September 1995, the Friends learnt that the Newsletter had been selected by BAFM as the liveliest newsletter of the year. The judges admired the fact that the Newsletter demonstrated a Friends group that has a close and mutually rewarding relationship with the Museum and its staff. Our thanks go to Janet Ridout Sharpe, the Newsletter editor, to Sally Owen, the Newsletter coordinator, and to all the Friends and Museum staff who have contributed their skills and time to this venture. Receiving a national award has set us all smiling and is a great inspiration for the future!
