Shield Displays at the Pitt Rivers Museum
Australian shields on display in the Upper Gallery.
This text is based upon a talk given by Alison Petch to the Museum Ethnographers' Group, and later published as Petch 1996 (see bibliography).
'The museum has retained much of its Victorian character. Painstaking labels hand-written by Henry Balfour can still be found attached to some of the artefacts and the 'feel' of many of the displays is quite different from those in more modern museums. The crammed black cases were initially devised almost as visible storage: the aim being to display as much material as possible for purposes of comparison.
In many museums the decisions about which objects should be displayed in isolation as 'important works of art' have already been taken for the visitor. Here the objects are on exhibition because they can reveal to us something about the culture of the people who made them. The things people use provide one of the most direct ways into their world. These objects are, of course, the products of art, in the deepest sense of being a revelation of human creativity. The most humdrum utensil can be an object of beauty because of the skill that went into its making. .... In Western culture, although the profound functions of art are recognised, it is seen as a thing in itself, which can be set apart from ordinary life. In non-industrial societies [sic], its function is integral to the whole life of the people. Objects are made because they are part of the religious life, relating this realm to others, or placating the gods and ancestors; or they are part of the healing process in recovering from illness, or the means of understanding your own identity. They may be very ephemeral - made with infinite pains for a particular ceremony and not used thereafter; or they may be expressions of political status and rank, or of those individual choices all human beings make about decoration and personal adornment. The museum's Lower Gallery is full of these. Aesthetic qualities in the objects themselves and the skill in individual artists and makers are recognised and appreciated, but often as manifestations of spiritual power. An essential part of the Museum's role in interpreting all this is to attempt not to make value judgements or decisions as to what is best and most beautiful. This leaves visitors free to make their own choices and responses.'
[Cousins, 1993: 23]
The above extract from the Souvenir Guide to the Museum gives a widely held view about the 'unchanging' appearance of the Museum and a justification for the type of overall displays that have been found in the Museum since 1884. The Pitt Rivers Museum is famous for many things, for the size and range of its collections, its typological displays and for being a 'museum of museums'. When people became aware that there were to be new displays in the Upper Gallery in the late 1980s, some concern was expressed that this would destroy the character of that part of the museum. Here the new displays are placed in a historical context, and it is shown that they were not a novel departure but followed and developed the Museum's tradition of typological and dense displays. It is also shown how new displays can blend the best of the new (for example, the opportunity to incorporate additional information) with the old.
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. 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.'
(Lane Fox 1906: 99)
The Bethnal Green display already showed some of the hallmarks that visitors would come to associate with the Pitt Rivers Museum. Chapman, in his unpublished D. Phil thesis on Pitt Rivers, describes it as:
'... relegated to the basement where it occupied 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. The remainder of the collection remained uncatalogued ...' [Chapman, 1981: 374]
The Bethnal Green museum was very popular with visitors, with up to half a million attending in one year. There was one important way in which this museum was not like the later Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford - it was open in the evenings (for the benefit of working men). Half of the visitors attended during these evening hours. The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford today is also very popular with visitors (an annual figure of around 230,000) but its opening hours are less liberal; 1.00 p.m. to 4.30 p.m. Monday to Saturday, with previously-agreed research and school visits permitted in the mornings Tuesday to Saturday.
Many visitors believe that the Museum they see today has remained entirely unaltered and unchanged. However, this is an illusion fostered by the unchanged building, the continued use of the original cases and the typological display techniques and density of objects, rather than the reality. Within a couple of years of the foundation of the museum, Balfour had begun rearranging Pitt Rivers' series to take account of new objects collected by other donors and 'new knowledge'. In the Annual Report for 1888 Balfour remarks:
'The frequent arrival of new and important additions, forming links in the series, necessitates constant slight rearrangements, in order to increase the educational value of the series, so that few series can be said to be completed, as their interest and value is constantly increasing.'
In 1890:
'... In the Upper Gallery several additions, partial re-arrangements and improvements have been made, and a large number of descriptive labels and sketches have been added in order to render the series more interesting and intelligible to the public.'
and in 1891
'During the year .. several series have been systematically treated, and more or less permanently arranged and labelled. ... The weaving and bark-cloth series has been rearranged, similarly the series of masks, primitive boat models and the fire-making series ...'
From these short extracts it can be seen that the Museum, within four years of receiving its first donation from General Pitt Rivers, had already begun to be rearranged. This process has continued. Sometimes new displays have been necessitated by changes in museum practice or usage (for example, the changes arising from the provision of the temporary exhibition area) or from the receipt of an important donation or loan (the Benin case). Sometimes displays are slightly altered to take account of new accessions or to include objects that have previously been in store. Recently an artist [David Paskett] worked for several months in the Museum producing watercolours. When his work was displayed during Oxford's Artweek, it quickly became apparent that, in the short time between his painting the displays and displaying the paintings, objects in the cases had been changed!
The Museum has always had typological displays, densely packed with objects housed within the original cases that were made at the same time as the museum. As I have previously indicated, many visitors believe that what they see in the museum is the untouched Victorian display. I believe that what people are recognising is the difference between this museum and others, and the basic tenets of a Pitt Rivers display; density of objects and typological arrangements.
The new Upper Gallery displays are firmly within the Pitt Rivers tradition; they may look superficially different from the 'original' displays but they are still arranged in typological groups and sub-groups, and they still include many more objects than has now become the norm for most museums. Next, I discuss these new displays.
This text is based upon part of a talk given by Alison Petch to the Museum Ethnographers' Group, and later published as Petch 1996 (see bibliography).