16 October – 16 November 2020 Photography and Women An online exhibition of photographs from the Museum's collection specially selected by staff as part of the Photo Oxford Festival. Online Exhibition
4 June – 24 November 2019 Ellen Ettlinger: A Folklorist Flees the Nazis This display highlighted the work of Ellen Ettlinger (1902–1994), a Jewish folklorist who was forced to flee Germany in 1938 due to persecution by the Nazi regime, and who settled in Oxford. Archive Case (First Floor)
1 April 2019 – 10 February 2020 Multaka: Connecting Threads Multaka-Oxford volunteers at the Pitt Rivers Museum worked with staff to add new perspectives to a collection of textiles recently donated by Jenny Balfour-Paul. Didcot Case (Lower Gallery)
12 November 2018 – 19 May 2019 Surveying the Nagas: Visual Representations of India’s Northern Hill-Tribes in the R. G. Woodthorpe Collection This display presented a selection of material from the Pitt Rivers Museum’s R. G. Woodthorpe collection, much of which has never before been on public view. Archive Case (First Floor)
29 October 2018 – 11 March 2019 A Tradition Continued: Iraqw Beaded Skirts Old and New Iraqw skirts are amongst the most elaborately decorated textiles from eastern Africa. Each skirt is unique, the design being a product of the skill of the individual maker and the resources available. Didcot Case (Lower Gallery)
15 October 2018 – 11 March 2019 Intrepid Women: Fieldwork in Action, 1910–1957 This exhibition focused on six of the Pitt Rivers Museum’s most important female collectors and their fieldwork carried out between 1910 and the late 1950s. Special Exhibition Gallery
13 October 2018 – 30 May 2019 Performing Tibetan Identities: Photographic Portraits by Nyema Droma The Tibetan photographer Nyema Droma, taking inspiration from the Museum’s historic collections, created portraits of other young Tibetans that celebrate their experience and challenge stereotypes. Installation in Court & Long Gallery
31 August 2018 – 25 January 2019 Tibetan Objects in Transition The material culture of Tibet has been sought, collected and studied in the West since the middle of the nineteenth century. Display Case C.56.A (Court)
28 May – 23 September 2018 ‘A Variety of Portraits of Persons’: From the Official Account of Cook’s Second Voyage to the Pacific (1772–1775) The eighteen prints displayed here were from a copy of ‘A Voyage towards the South Pole, and Round the World’. This was the official account of James Cook’s second famous voyage to the Pacific, from 1772 to 1775. Archive Case (First Floor)
24 November 2017 – 4 March 2018 Pigeon Whistles: An Orchestra in Flight This was a project by composer Nathaniel Mann who, intrigued by the Museum’s collection of pigeon whistles on display, devised a work that involved homing pigeons carrying music across the country. Puppet Case (Lower Gallery)
20 February – 15 May 2017 Oxfordshire Folklore and Customs: Celebrating the Centenary of Antiquarian and Folklorist Percy Manning A display commemorating the centenary of the death of antiquarian and folklorist Percy Manning (1870–1917), who had a keen interest in archaeology and the history of English customs and traditions. Didcot Case (Lower Gallery)
1 November 2016 – 30 April 2017 Embroidered Visions: Photographs of Central Asia and the Middle East by Sheila Paine This exhibition presented a selection of photographs taken by textile expert Sheila Paine during her travels in Central Asia and the Middle East in the late 1980s and 1990s. Long Gallery
16 August 2016 – 12 February 2017 Stitch of a Symbol – Insights into the Textile Journeys of Sheila Paine This display followed a series of extraordinary journeys by Sheila Paine, whose aim was to discover the origins of an embroidered dress seen in a London textile dealer’s shop in the late 1980s. Didcot Case (Lower Gallery)
18 July – 4 December 2016 Chapman’s Northern Lights: Arctic Skies, Rolling Seas, Changing Landscapes This display presented a selection of original prints taken during the British Arctic Air-Route Expedition to Greenland in 1930–31. Archive Case (First Floor)
30 November 2015 – 6 March 2016 Burton Bros. of Dunedin: Photographs of New Zealand and Fiji by a Late Nineteenth-Century Commercial Studio This display presented twenty-six mounted albumen prints by the Burton Brothers studio of Dunedin, New Zealand. Archive Case (First Floor)
9 June – 28 September 2014 Star House Pole: Early Images of the Haida Totem Pole in the Pitt Rivers Museum This display presented a selection of historic images – including photographs, drawings and published material – relating to the Haida totem pole on display in the Pitt Rivers Museum. Archive Case (First Floor)
29 April – 1 September 2013 Travels in Finland and Bosnia-Herzegovina: An Ethnographic Collection of Sir Arthur Evans This display presented a selection of twenty-three drawings, sketches and photographs by the archaeologist Sir Arthur J. Evans (1851–1941). Archive Case (First Floor)
21 January – 21 April 2013 Brazil, Chile, Peru, 1829–32: A Naval Surgeon’s Costumbrismo Collection This collection of watercolours was given to the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1933 by a Miss Wakefield. It contains fine examples of costumbrismo, a genre of painting with Spanish origins that became popular in South America in the early 19th century. Archive Case (First Floor)
16 April – 2 September 2012 Reading the Ruins: Alfred Maudslay and the Maya Site of Quirigua, Guatemala This display presented ten mounted prints by Alfred Percival Maudslay (1850–1931), known as the father of Mesoamerican archaeology, alongside related material concerning his pioneering work during the early 1880s at the Maya site of Quirigua. Archive Case (First Floor)
26 September 2011 – 8 January 2012 A Pioneer of Prehistory: Dorothy Garrod and the Caves of Mount Carmel This display presented seventeen photographs from the collection of the archaeologist Dorothy Garrod (1892–1968), which was given to the Pitt Rivers Museum by her friend and executor Suzanne Cassou de Saint Mathurin in 1986. Archive Case (First Floor)
11 April – 18 September 2011 The Last Samurai: Jacques-Philippe Potteau’s Photographs of the Japanese Missions to Europe, 1862 and 1864 This display presented fourteen mounted albumen prints and two related engravings from the important Takenouchi mission to Europe (1862) and the Ikeda mission to France (1864). Archive Case (First Floor)
22 November 2010 – 27 March 2011 Among the Pueblos: John K. Hillers (1843–1925), Photographer of the American Southwest This display presented eighteen original albumen prints by John Karl Hillers (1843–1925), pioneer photographer of the American Southwest. Archive Case (First Floor)
19 September 2010 – 6 November 2011 Costume of a King A display of a gown that was found in the Museum's textile store without any documentation in 1974. It turned out to be much more important than just ‘probably West African, possibly Nigerian’, as it was identified then. Didcot Case (Lower Gallery)
4 June 2010 – 5 June 2011 Wilfred Thesiger in Africa: A Centenary Exhibition This exhibition celebrated arguably the greatest traveller of the twentieth century, and one of its greatest explorers, Sir Wilfred Thesiger (1910–2003), who is most famous for his journeys in Arabia and his sojourns among the Marsh Arabs in Iraq. Special Exhibition Gallery
