University ofOxford University ANNUAL REPORT 2015 to 2016 Contents MISSION STATEMENT To inspire and share knowledge and understanding with global audiences about humanity’s many ways of knowing, being, creating and coping in our interconnected worlds by providing a world-leading museum for the cross-disciplinary study of humanity through material culture. 1 Director’s introduction 4 9 Running the Museum 27 Administration 27 2 The year’s highlights 6 Front of House 27 The VERVE project enters its last phase 6 Commercial activities 27 The Cook-Voyages Case 6 Donation boxes 27 Kintsugi: Celebrating Imperfection 6 Balfour Library 28 Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Public Engagement with Research 7 Buildings and maintenance 28 Cataloguing the handling collection 7 10 Appendices 29 3 Permanent galleries and temporary A Pitt Rivers Museum Board of Visitors as of exhibitions 8 1 August 2015 29 Permanent galleries 8 B Museum staff by section 29 Temporary displays 9 C Finance 30 Long Gallery 10 D Visitor numbers, enquiries, research visits and loans 31 Archive Case 10 Object collections 31 Photograph, manuscript, film and sound collections 31 4 Higher education teaching and research 12 Loans 31 Research Associates 14 E Interns, volunteers and work experience 32 Object collections 32 5 Collections and their care 16 Photograph, manuscript, film and sound collections 32 Photograph, manuscript, film and sound collections 16 Conservation department 32 Conservation work 18 Education department 32 Oxford University Internship Programme 18 F New acquisitions 33 Cover photograph: Japanese carver Hideta Kitazawa making Asante weights 18 Donations 33 Storage projects 18 Purchases 33 a Noh mask (2015.28.4), commissioned by the Museum for Catalogue databases 19 Transfers 33 its new Woodwork display as part of the VERVE project. Balfour Library 33 Photograph by Sohta Kitazawa. 6 Digital innovations 20 G Staff publications 33 Designed and produced by Claire Venables at Giraffe Corner 7 Museum and community 22 The VERVE project 22 Photographs and text are copyright of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Family activities 22 University of Oxford, unless otherwise stated Primary school activities 23 Secondary school activities 23 Pitt Rivers Museum Adult and community activities 24 South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PP Out in Oxford 25 [email protected] 01865 270927 www.prm.ox.ac.uk 8 Supporting the Museum: The Friends 26 PITT RIVERS MUSEUM 3 Director’s introduction 1 © John Cairns This year has been an exceptionally exciting one, with a significant university museum in the 21st century, and on finding a focus that Oxford as a city is rapidly diversifying. With 36.4% of the For decades many generous trusts, foundations and research funders number of staff changes, displays and exhibitions, and large-scale suits the contemporary, acknowledges our pasts and imagines new population of Oxford city being of other than white British descent, have financed our activities. We need to secure further funding like off-site storage collection moves. At the beginning of the year, the futures. All staff contributed generously as we organised several series and most tourist and web audiences also being very diverse, how do this to continue the core work this financial support has enabled. In Museum said farewell to Professor Michael O’Hanlon, who served of conversations about the values, principles and vision that guide us: we ensure the stories we tell are relevant to all of our future visitors? particular, I would like to express my sincere thanks to the William as its Director since April 1998. His achievements in the post are too • To celebrate expertise wherever it may arise, to respect the sensitive How do we engage with stimulating, ongoing discussions regarding Delafield Charitable Trust for their continuous generous support many to mention here, but include leading capital redevelopments of nature of the objects we keep and treat this legacy with the greatest pressing matters such as equal access to opportunity, mobility and to enable the Museum to develop our exhibitions, programs and the Museum, successive year after year growth in visitor numbers, and of care. representation? How do we ensure we are a truly hospitable place for collections. However, in these financially turbulent times and in many successful and transformative grant applications. On Mike’s • To engage in and facilitate cutting-edge research on the collections; all our possible audiences and engage inclusively with the intrinsically order to achieve a sustainable operating model, the Museum is also retirement, Professor Laura Peers assumed the Acting Directorship in continually adding knowledge, perspectives and new objects. complex histories represented in our collections? How do we best becoming increasingly reliant on fundraising, commercial income and October to pass the baton to me in March. • To challenge thinking about museums and their place in the world connect to the other GLAM1 collections, to the University of is looking to raise endowments for senior staff posts. We are happy to What should a new Director bring to an institution that is already through teaching and research; engaging in dialogues and debates Oxford at large and to more international settings, so that we ensure be able to count on the support of GLAM’s Development Office to ranked among the best of its kind? A world-class museum of about the Museum, its collections and the entangled histories that a multiplicity of voices is invited to tell the manifold stories our ensure we meet our targets in this area. Simultaneously, we are looking anthropology and archaeology, the Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM) is a underpin them. collections hold of humanity’s creative ways of being, ways of knowing to diversify our income streams and develop our commercial activity, centre for object-based teaching and research so loved by its visitors • We want to be thought-provoking, need to be self-reflexive, and and ways of coping? as well as identify resource efficiencies, including the use of our space. that on TripAdvisor it features as the second of over 160 things to do in work in sustained relationships between people, objects, pasts, pre- In the meantime, very down-to-earth logistical matters have also I would like to thank the Museum’s Friends organisation, under its Oxford. A consciously curated mix of contemporary interpretation and sents and futures, including reconnecting objects with originating kept us occupied. We are moving one-third of our collections to a energetic Chair Gillian Morriss-Kay, and of course every member of historic object labels in the displays offers an insight into the palimpsest communities. different space. Over 110,000 Pitt Rivers Museum objects currently staff, whether mentioned by name in this Annual Report or not. On a of meaning-giving that is the making of representations. The richness • We respect cultural diversity and enable audiences to perceive the stored offsite are in the process of being catalogued, photographed, weekly basis, I receive praise that is illustrative of how people experience in the histories of the displays, the collections themselves and the Pitt displays, collections and their histories from different points of view packed and transported to a new home that will hold much of the our Museum, its displays, events, and programmes, their impact and Rivers Museum’s founding role in the formation of material culture philosophically, physically and virtually. University’s museums’ collections and hopefully (we must allow how the very personal involvement of our staff is appreciated widely. studies have made it a must-visit venue for students and researchers of • We want to ensure that we are part of a process of redress, social ourselves to dream) a joint University of Oxford collections research Comments concern the quality, honesty and engagement of our staff many disciplines. Indeed, our curatorial principles suggest a democracy healing and mending of historically difficult relationships through centre. The management of this requires a unique combination of and are not a reflection of any individual’s work alone, but are very much of things and illustrate how, paradoxically, much of humanity’s histories collaboration with stakeholders near and far. imaginative thinking and focused efficiency to address this daunting a tribute to the joint effort put into all activity by every member of staff. and experiences are at times interwoven with and, simultaneously, very • To inspire creativity in all its many forms. task. At the same time we are conscious that the move is also an I gladly share a selection of these throughout the report. much the product of, a great many coexisting realities where people There are several activities or events from this year that I wish to amazing opportunity to finally give this part of our collections the find very different solutions to solving similar problems. highlight. The Museum’s major Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF)-funded attention it so greatly deserves and to make it accessible to our global Densely packed and multi-layered Victorian displays – with over project VERVE (Visitors, Engagement, Renewal, Visibility and audiences. 55,000 objects on view – offer a unique experience to every visitor who Enrichment) entered its final phase. In November we had the honour of Several major, externally funded research and public engagement comes through our doors. We try to welcome each and every one of hosting two Japanese lacquerware artists at the Museum for the kintsugi projects also benefitted from financial support this year, to trace, them. The 430,000 people who visited us this year (an all-time record) artist residency. During the ten-day residency the artists held workshops, interrogate and establish links between collectors, collections, came to find inspiration, enchantment and knowledge that were of gave gallery demonstrations, delivered a Saturday Spotlight talk and an contemporary issues and communities across the world.