The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford is one of my all time favourite museums on the planet. Being a fan of both natural history and archaeology/anthropology, this could possibly be the perfect museum for me.
The building is split into two distinct areas, you enter the building to find a light-filled, cathedral-like wrought iron and glass hall which houses the natural history collection, the lofty Gothic arches and fine columns are quite a distraction from the skeletal whales and dinosaurs and the last Dodo.
The second part of the museum is the polar opposite of this light spacious gallery. A dark hall crowded with display cases houses the museum’s amazing anthropological/ethnographic collection. All manner of human life is here, from Noh theatre masks to grass skirts, from canoes to shrunken heads and a totem pole. Each case is crammed with curios. It is magnificent ordered chaos, and just as a museum should be. I hope it never changes.
