The collection of compressed heads has been removed from the museum affiliated with Oxford University in the context of its decolonization process.
The Pitt Rivers Museum has been closed for several months due to a coronavirus epidemic. When it reopens on September 22, it will look different than visitors.
Following a three-year review of the display and programming “from an ethical point of view,” employees are removing human remains from its collection of more than 500,000 works of art. In total, 120 objects containing human remains were removed from the scene, in addition to an additional 71 non-biological objects that were in similar exhibits, the museum told CNN on Tuesday.
The museum said in a statement on Monday that “its colonial heritage has been transformed by a desire to join deeply.”
The Museum of Anthropology, Anthropology and Archeology retrieves its vast collection, which includes musical instruments, weapons, masks, textiles, jewelery and instruments, covering more than 130 years.
The museum is known for its collection of curious curiosities. Deposit: Ian Walman / Pit Rivers Museum / University Xford University
Hugh Warwick / Pitt Reverse Museum / University Xford University
Artifacts created by Ecuador and South America’s Schuer and Achhur people include Schuer Tsanta – or compressed heads.
Made up of human, sluggish and monkey heads, they were highly invented and collectors paid a gun per head, “the height of 19th and 20th century collections led to a sharp rise in locally violent warfare,” the museum said.
Received by the museum between 1884 and 1936, the heads have been on display since the 1940s.
The museum inspired a magical shop in Nocturn Alley in the film adaptation of “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of F Azzakaban”, featuring a shrunken head. A spokesman for the museum told CNN. Said the production team visited the museum while researching the site.
Many items on display have now been relabeled. Deposit: Hugh Warwick / Pitt Reverse Museum / University Xford University
Hugh Warwick / Pitt Reverse Museum / University Xford University
Much of the museum’s collection is “tied to the British imperial expansion and the colonial order to collect and classify collectibles from around the world,” the museum said, adding that “the historical labels on many artefacts depicting racist and derogatory language at the time.”
Other human remains, including the Naga Trophy head and the mummy of an Egyptian child, have now been moved to storage.
Heads are now placed in storage. Deposit: Hugh Warwick / Pitt Reverse Museum / University Xford University
Squeezed heads have long caused controversy. Deposit: Hugh Warwick / Pitt Rivers Museum / University Xford University
The museum said the Shuar community has not been asked to return the head, but it is “open to any discussion about their homeland and will continue to communicate with Shuar’s representatives in the coming years.”
The museum said it still “cares” rather than owning, More than 2,800 human remains from different parts of the world.
Dynasty communities are being approached to find “the most appropriate way to take care of these complex things”.
Laura Van Brookhoven, director of the museum, said in a statement: “Research from our audience has shown that visitors often view the museum’s display of human remains as ‘cruel’, ‘primitive’ or ‘monstrous’ to other cultures.”
“Instead of enabling our visitors to gain a better understanding of each other’s ways of being, the exhibitions reinforced racist and racist thinking that is contrary to museum values today.”
The museum’s research collaborator Marenka Thompson-l Dulum, who curated many new displays, said removing objects also creates space to tell more “elaborate stories.”
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