A very 21st-century Victorian museum
The VERVE project: Visitors, Engagement, Renewal, Visibility and Enrichment at the Pitt Rivers Museum.
It is a common misconception that the Pitt Rivers never changes; in fact the museum has undergone almost ten years of physical development. In 2009 the platform at the museum entrance was re-established, affording visitors a breathtaking first sight of the intriguing space. A huge rise in visitor numbers led to the third and current phase: VERVE, a five-year project to redisplay and reinterpret the collections for today’s audience.
VERVE (Visitors, Engagement, Renewal, Visibility and Enrichment) is presented to visitors under the snappier title of ‘Need Make Use’. The £1.6 million project was started with £1 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund, with the rest of the money coming from other generous donors.
In the words of VERVE Curator and Engagement Officer Helen Adams, the backbone of the project is to rethink displays with ‘the focus on craftsmanship, and the materials and techniques that go into making objects’, to demonstrate that ‘these objects still have resonance, and they still act as inspiration for people today.’
Formerly a collection of labelled tools, the leatherwork display now illustrates the craft as a process, explains Helen, showing ‘raw materials, tools, and partly and fully finished products. So you can see how one thing turns into something else.’ Contemporary artists and craftspeople are regularly invited to produce work in direct response to the collections.
In previous phases of the Pitt Rivers’ refurbishment the museum has had to close completely to the public. Spread over five years, VERVE is able to continue its work incrementally, without the need to close to visitors.
In fact, public engagement has never been so busy and visitor numbers never so high. Workshops have recreated North American stitched canoes, launching the results on the canal. Evening openings have encouraged local workers to explore the collections with a peaceful glass of wine. A ‘pop-up museum’ takes handling collections out to local fetes and festivals.
The future
At the beating heart of the museum, as Head Conservator Heather Richardson points out, are its core activities: modern cataloguing; basic conservation to preserve an artefact for future generations; good storage. A delicate Tahitian poncho made from bark fibre, when carefully opened out and conserved, is an astonishing and evocative artefact – but takes up ten times as much space as it did in its original bundled form.
With 600,000 objects and three storage outposts scattered around the city, this is the vital work that will need to attract continuing funding in the future if the fantastic public engagement of the VERVE project is to be built on.
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