Kenneth Kirkwood Day 2025: Who owns Museum Collections?

Saturday 29 March, 10.00 - 16.00

Please note that all places need to be booked in advance, so that we are aware of catering requirements.

Members £40 ( Includes lunch & tea/coffee) Book here

Non-members £55 (Includes lunch & tea/coffee) Book here

 Students £15 (Includes tea/coffee, bring your own lunch) Book here

Oxford GLAM Staff (ID required for entry on the day) Book here

Since its inception 25 years ago, the annual Kenneth Kirkwood Day looks at key issues affecting society and the Museum. Eminent speakers, all experts in their own field, are invited to speak about the subject, looking at it from the angle of their own expertise.

Following on from successful days focusing on the themes of migration and slavery, the 2025 Kenneth Kirkwood Day will explore the hot topic of repatriations, looking at how different museums are approaching this, and if, how and why returns should be made.

Professor Laura Van Broekhoven, Director of the Pitt Rivers Museum, said: "Since its inception 25 years ago, the Kenneth Kirkwood Day has provided a fantastic forum for for members of the public and leading experts to discuss and debate the issues affecting museums and wider society. This year's event poses the most challenging and relevant questions that museum leaders and originating communities globally face and offers the chance to hear how different institutions are approaching essential work in repatriation and cultural redress. At the Pitt Rivers Museum, work with local and global communities drives much of our daily work now, and given the colonial nature of our collections, this presents complex challenges. The topic of this Kenneth Kirkwood Day offers us a chance, as directors who have taken on the responsibility of leadership over these contentious collections, to speak about how we are developing new leadership practices, a willingness to be held accountable, and speak of our work through the lens of accountability, hope, reconciliation and collaborative practice."

Speakers

Professor Laura Van Broekhoven, Director of the Pitt Rivers Museum

Dr Nicholas Cullinan OBE, Director of the British Museum

Mr Neil Curtis, Head of Museums and Special Collections & Honorary Senior Lecturer in Social Science at the University of Aberdeen

Dr Errol Francis, Artistic Director and CEO of Culture&

Dr Alexander Sturgis, Director of the Ashmolean Museum

Bios

Professor Laura Van Broekhoven is the Director of the Pitt Rivers Museum and Professor of Museum Studies, Ethics and Material Culture at the University of Oxford and member of the Dutch Advisory Committee on Repatriation of Colonial Collections that advises the Dutch Ministry of Culture on repatriation. A professorial fellow of Linacre College, Laura is also associated with the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, Oxford. Previously, Laura led the curatorial department of the National Museum of World Cultures (Amsterdam, Leiden and Berg en Dal) and was Assistant Professor in Archaeology, Museum Studies and Indigenous Heritage at the Faculty of Archaeology at Leiden University. She is an international authority on museum ethics and the development of new praxis in the field of ethnographic museums, with several pioneering projects and academic articles on this subject to her name. At the 2022 European Museum of the Year Awards, Laura was awarded the Kenneth Hudson Award for Institutional Courage and Professional Integrity by the European Museum Forum alongside Wayne Modest (Dutch National Museum of World Cultures), Nanette Snoep (Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum), and Léontine Meijer-Van Mensch (State Ethnographic Collections of Saxony). The European Museum Forum recognised these four museum directors for their '”personal courage and professional integrity in their continuous contributions to developing a new global ethics for museums, addressing the urgent and contentious issues of decolonization, restitution, reparation and repatriation.”

Dr Xa Sturgis has been Director of the Ashmolean Museum since 2014. Before taking up his current post, he was Director of the Holburne Museum, Bath (2005-2014), where he oversaw the Museum's major renovation and extension. From 1990 to 2005 he worked at the National Gallery in a number of roles including Exhibitions and Programmes Curator. Among the exhibitions he has curated and his publications are: Telling Time (NG 2000); Bill Viola, the Passions (NG 2003); Rebels and Martyrs, The Image of the Artist in the 19th century (NG 2006); Presence, The Art of Portrait Sculpture (Holburne 2012) and Jeff Koons at the Ashmolean (Ashmolean 2019).

Xa was appointed Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in the King's Birthday Honours 2024 for his services to culture.

Dr Nicholas Cullinan OBE started as Director of the British Museum in June 2024. He was previously Director of the National Portrait Gallery and oversaw the biggest transformation of the Gallery since its building opened in 1896. He also initiated an innovative international collaboration with Getty to co-acquire Portrait of Mai by Sir Joshua Reynolds, the largest acquisition in the Gallery's history and that the UK has ever made (along with the Titian acquired by the National Gallery and National Galleries of Scotland in 2009). Prior to this, he was a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Tate Modern in London, where he co-curated an exhibition of Henri Matisses's cut-outs with Sir Nicholas Serota in 2014, which is the most popular exhibition in the Tate's history and the first to receive more than 500,000 visitors.

Mr Neil Curtis studied Archaeology (Glasgow), Museum Studies (Leicester) and Education (Aberdeen), and has worked with the Aberdeen collections since 1988. He teaches across a range of subjects, including Archaeology, Anthropology, Art History, History, Law, Museum Studies and Scottish Ethnology. His published research includes current museum issues, including repatriation, decolonisation and ethics, the history of museums and exhibitions in Scotland and the prehistory of North-East Scotland. He is a Fellow of the Museums Association and is a member of the working group reviewing its Code of Ethics. He has been a member of the Museums Associations' Ethics Committee, the Scottish Museums Recognition Committee, Convenor of University Museums in Scotland, Vice-President of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and Vice-Chair of the Scottish Archaeological Finds Allocation Panel.

Dr Errol Francis is Artistic Director and CEO of Culture&. Errol studies photography and fine art at Central St Martin's, University of the Arts, London. His doctoral research at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, focused on postcolonial artistic responses to museums. Errol's background in mental health activism has influenced his arts practice, such as his role as Head of Arts at the Mental Health Foundation and his directing of the Anxiety Arts Festival 2014, Cyborgs 2019 and his work in the curatorial research group PS/Y. More recently, Errol has been commissioned by the charity Hospital Rooms to make a site-specific work of art in collaboration with patients in an NHS mental healthcare unit. Errol was content manager for the Culture Box research project at the University of of Exeter, which promoted social interaction and public health through the arts in the time of COVID-19 for people living with dementia in care homes. He is Visiting Lecturer at the University of Greenwich, Goldsmiths University, London and Sotheby's Institute of Art.

The Members of the Pitt Rivers Museum (formerly the Friends) have helped to fund projects and acquisitions, and have supported the purchase of display cases and important conservation work. The vital and much-needed fundraising carried out by the Members includes the annual Kenneth Kirkwood Day which is used as a fundraiser to give staff bursaries for travel and research. To find out more about the Kenneth Kirkwood Fund, see here.