Mathom House

Janet finally got her way and took me to Oxford for the day, to visit the Pitt-Rivers Museum of anthropology and archaeology. It's quite a remarkable place and not one for the faint hearted. 

Imagine someone has taken all the world and put it into glass cases by "thing"... There's a case full of masks - from siberia, papua new guinea, australia, peru... there's a case beside it of model boats from a similarly vast catchment... perhaps you'd like to look at this case full of stringed instruments... oh, and don't forget all the drawers underneath! There seems no way to glean a coherent image of any one culture - it's all a mish mash!

Add to this mix a low illumination (they actually provide torches!) and small font labels in the shadows, full of ambiguous detail. It's like a vast kaleidoscope of mystery! They actually open this place at night and let people walk about with only those torches... perhaps the film was inspired here; night in the museum?

Don't think I didn't enjoy it, I did, but it seems the antithesis of modern museum exhibitions. And I probably needed to take my glasses with me - I of course had a torch in my pocket.