Lieutenant-General Pitt-Rivers did not make the museum in Oxford that bears his name, or the objects within it. The real makers of the museum are the people who lived (and live) outside its walls; who made and used the objects on display, and the people whose lives are glimpsed in its photograph collections. The PRM database holds only a partial record of the lives of these ‘makers’ of the museum. There are over 324,000 objects in the museum collection but only approximately 15,000 of these objects have any information about the people who made them. Similarly of a total 283,000 photographs only 20,000 have identified people in them.
Makers and subjects have often been silenced within the Museum's displays, labels, catalogues and exhibitions, which have historically focused on collectors, cultures, and curators. Until now there has been no systematic research on this maker dataset.
Making the Museum is the first major research project in an ethnographic museum to investigate maker identities and agencies across the breadth of its collections. Through detailed analysis of the Museum’s database, associated documentation, objects and archives, and through a pioneering series of maker research fellowships, the project will transform our understanding of the museum by foregrounding the role that makers have had in shaping the collections and thereby in some sense the museum experience itself.
Pitt Rivers Museum Research Seminar in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology, Trinity Term 2025
Fridays, 12pm-1.30pm (Weeks 1-4)
In person at the Pitt Rivers Museum Lecture Theatre (entry via Robinson Close).
Convened by Dr Beth Hodgett and Dr Christopher Morton
