Displaying Pitt Rivers' Collection
Pitt Rivers very soon exhausted the space available in his own house to show his collections. In 1872 he loaned a number of musical instruments for a special exhibition at South Kensington Museum (later renamed the Victoria and Albert Museum). When he moved to Guildford in 1873 he decided that his collection should be publicly exhibited and arranged with the South Kensington Museum to display around 10,000 objects at the Bethnal Green branch of that museum (Chapman, 1991:153, 156). It should always be remembered, however, that the whole of his collection was never exhibited together in one place. Part of his collection was displayed from this date in museums (at Bethnal Green and Oxford), but other parts of his collection were never on public display but kept in his homes and another part was only exhibited after 1880 at his private museum in Dorset.
The Bethnal Green displays showed some of the hallmarks that visitors would come to associate with the Pitt Rivers Museum. It has been described as:
... [Occupying] the whole south end of the available display area. Table cabinets were placed at the centre of the room, standing cabinets and simple pegboards around the periphery, along with drawings. The whole was carefully arranged, with aisles and stopping places strategically set out and painted arrows providing the proper sequence for visitors ... The first segment of the exhibit, was devoted to skull types and other physical features including samples of skin and hair. Drawings ... supplemented actual specimens ... The second part of the collection was 'Weapons', beginning with the display of throwing sticks and parrying shields ... (t)he next series was headdresses [sic], followed by more complete series of boomerangs and clubs, again accompanied by illustrations. Displays of blowguns, darts and arrows, crossbows, flails, canoe paddles, and finally halberd spikes, swords, daggers and bayonets completed the section.... (Chapman, 1981:374)
There were other types of objects from the Pitt Rivers collection displayed at Bethnal Green but they were not listed in the published catalogue and for this reason we know much less about them.
He was allowed almost total control over the way in which exhibits were displayed at Bethnal Green and this was therefore an opportunity for members of the public to see his intellectual ideas set out in physical arrangement. Farnham Museum provided a second opportunity. The organisation of the displays at Bethnal Green can still be glimpsed in the pages of the catalogue of part of his collection, published in 1874. The catalogue is set out so that a visitor could consult it as he or she followed the pre-ordained route through the display of physical anthropological specimens to weapons. As I have already intimated the objects were:
...arranged in sequence with a view to show ... the successive ideas by which the minds of men in a primitive condition of culture have progressed in the development of their arts from the simple to the complex, and from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. .... (PR, 1874: xi and xii)
Although Pitt Rivers' views had broadly made him favour typological displays that apparently showed the evolution of ideas and objects, he could also see some merit in geographical arrangements by which the '... the general culture of each distinct race is made the prominent feature of the collection ...' (PR, 1874:xiii), but he did not employ this display technique himself. He did, however, propose that a synthesis of geographical and typological displays, set out in concentric circles, might prove the best of all possible solutions for the 'National Anthropological Collection' (PR, 1906:3). He was critical of other ethnographic displays that he believed to be, '... almost universally bad, and .. calculated rather to display the several articles to advantage, on the principle of shop windows, than to facilitate the deductions of science' (PR, 1906:99).
In 1878 his collection was moved to the main South Kensington Museum where it was allocated 'two rooms in the Exhibition Galleries on the western side of the Horticultural Gardens' (PR, 1874:frontispiece). In 1880 he decided that his collection should have a permanent home and, after casting about for suitable alternatives, eventually settled upon the University of Oxford.
On 30 May 1882 the University accepted the offer of Pitt Rivers' collection. An annexe, measuring approximately seventy by eighty-six feet, was built on to the eastern side of the University Museum to house the collection. H.N. Moseley, Head of the Department of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, was put in charge of the collection and E.B. Tylor was appointed the first Lecturer in Anthropology in Britain. The University undertook to carry on Pitt Rivers' general method of arrangement of objects during his lifetime and agreed that any changes after that date would only be instituted if 'the advance of knowledge required it' (Chapman, 1981:478). Although Pitt Rivers' original stipulations had suggested an on-going interest in his collection once it was given to Oxford, in fact he did not display much interest in it after this date, transferring his interest to his new museum in Farnham, Dorset.
According to Gray, after succeeding to the Rushmore estate Pitt Rivers devoted a large proportion of his time to the formation and development of a second huge collection of archaeological and ethnographical objects. This second collection was displayed in 'nine rooms and galleries in the notable local museum of Farnham, north Dorset'. He intended the Museum to house the archaeological objects found on his property together with the models he had had made of the excavations and to form a collection of agricultural implements and related material for the education of the 'country folk'. Later the collection became more comprehensive and contained peasant costume and ornamentation, household utensils from around the world, pottery, stone and bronze implements, glass-making and enamelling, a series on the development of the Christian cross in Celtic times, lighting apparatus, a collection of Benin objects, carvings etc. Many of these types and groups of objects seem familiar from the Pitt Rivers Museum. Bowden describes how Farnham Museum was liberally provided with descriptive accounts and each object labelled.
In 1898 Pitt Rivers complained to the then President of the Royal Anthropological Institute: 'Oxford was not the place for [my collection] and I should never have given it there if I had not been ill at the time and anxious to find a resting place for [it] of some kind in the future. I have always regretted it, and my new museum at Farnham, Dorset represents my views on the subject much better' (Chapman, 1991:166 quoting from a letter PR to FW Rudler 23.5.1898 Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum PR papers correspondence). It seems that he never really achieved happy relations with the independent museums who cared for his collections and was much happier managing his own artefacts in his own space.
In a letter to E. B. Tylor in 1898, Pitt Rivers demonstrated how his views on displays had altered over time:
I have rather changed my view as to the principle on which a small collection for a local anthropological museum, such as my present one is, should be collected. I still think the primary arrangement should be in divisions by arts and subjects and the secondary one within each large division should be geographical. But the primary divisions in a small local Museum should be broader, thus instead of having a separate division for representations of the human form I make it Art and Ornament and make it include both realism and styleism and also the adaption of animal forms to ornament which in my original collection I kept separate. Where sequences occur they can be shewn within the primary division and where a reference passes from one country to another the geographical sub-arrangement must be slightly broken. (Extract from letter from PR to Tylor, PRM Archives P11, 7.8.1898)
This letter was written towards the end of Pitt Rivers life and, interestingly, shows that whilst his views on the arrangement of objects in his collections might have changed over time, the arrangement of some of the collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford have not; there are still cases in the museum showing 'Human Form in Tribal Art' and 'Animal Form in Art' etc.
Pitt Rivers was a fervent believer in the virtues of public education and in addition to the Farnham Museum he laid out the Larmer Tree Grounds at Tollard Royal (on his estate). These pleasure grounds were designed for family entertainment; many buildings were erected, some designed by the General himself, and a brass band performed in the Gardens on Sunday afternoons. The Gardens have recently reopened to the general public.
After the General died in 1900 an argument broke out as to whether
'the [Farnham] Museum belonged to the Pitt Rivers family or to a charitable trust. The argument was resolved in favour of the family and the Museum ran smoothly for the next thirty years ... [In] 1925 Capt George Pitt Rivers relabelled and rearranged the collections .... Farnham Museum remained open to the public almost continuously until Capt Pitt Rivers' death in 1966. After his death it appeared that he had sold the Museum to a Trust Company and stories about the disposal of parts of the collection [were rife] ... In 1975 it was announced that the archaeological material would go to the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum ... Much of the ethnographic material, as well as a few archaeological pieces had already been sold by the Trust Company and ex-Farnham Museum pieces continued [and continue] to appear in the London sale rooms.'
(Bowden, 1991: 152 - 153)
Pitt Rivers achieved many things during his lifetime. He was a successful soldier, rising through the ranks to a position of prominence; he amassed an unrivalled ethnographic collection and undertook pioneering archaeological fieldwork. He helped to establish the Royal Anthropological Institute; through his work on the first edition of Notes and Queries for the Institute he helped to guide the first faltering steps of anthropological fieldwork; and through the donation of his collection to the University of Oxford and his requirement that the University fund an associated teaching post, he ensured that anthropology became accepted as a suitable subject for academic research.
His pioneering archaeological excavation and recording work has been acknowledged by many archaeologists (for example Glyn Daniels). Bowden reports that for many years Pitt Rivers was seen principally as an innovator in field techniques, recording and publication but that, in fact, many of Pitt Rivers archaeological successes derived from the ideas of colleagues and much of his greatness lay in his ability to adapt and amplify others' ideas (Bowden, 1991:154).
In ethnography Pitt Rivers has had a lasting impact because of the donation of 20,000 objects to the Pitt Rivers Museum. This has enabled an excellent and diverse selection of objects to survive to the present day. At a time when few people were seriously collecting ethnographic objects, Pitt Rivers systematically put together related collections of everyday things as well as rare and highly prized art objects. His interest in everyday artefacts, which could have grown out of the Great Exhibitions so common in Europe in the middle of the nineteenth century, anticipated the great interest shown today in such subjects. Students, scholars and members of the general public today can enjoy the fruits of his collection and the other objects collected and donated since 1884 by visiting the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford.
The text above is taken from Petch 1998 (see bibliography).