The Pitt Rivers Museum welcomes your interest in the return of items from the collections.
The Museum has two returns policies and procedures, one relating to requests for the return of ancestral human remains and the other relating to requests for the return of objects of cultural significance. These policies can be found at https://www.glam.ox.ac.uk/human-remains-policy and https://www.glam.ox.ac.uk/procedures-for-return-of-cultural-objects-claims.
If you are an individual or a community who wishes to submit a request or is thinking about submitting a request, we would encourage you to contact us for an informal conversation before starting. We are happy to meet online or in person to discuss whether there are ways in which we can help you and facilitate or streamline the process.
Restitution work at the Pitt Rivers is done through the Collections Department of the Museum. We are a small team but recognise the importance of this work to communities and are keen to build relationships of trust, in what can be an emotional and impactful journey.
Ways in which we may be able to help include:
Database support - we use our collections database daily but we recognise that not everyone works in a museum.
- We want to be sure that you can see all the objects which might be relevant to your claim.
- We also want to be sure that you are able to see any associated information that we may have on those objects.
- We are able to offer searching time with one of our team. We normally do this as an online meeting and share our screen to allow you to see any information or images. We can search using any names (current or antiquated), dates, geographical locations or other words that you feel might be helpful.
- We can supply you with exports of our database information in Word, Excel or PDF formats.
Provenance research - we are not able to do full provenance research on the objects relating to a claim but we are able to do an overview of what information is held in the museum records and in Oxford. Sometimes we can point people to other potentially relevant research(ers), information or collections in the UK and elsewhere.
Template for a claim - we have produced a template which we would encourage you to use when starting to write your claim. The template covers all the major requirements outlined in our return policies. It also simplifies the process of assessing your claim by making sure that all the questions are answered.
Networks - if you are looking for other museums which may have similar collections, we may be able to help as we work closely with other museums in the UK and around the world. We are also part of the UK's Museum Ethnographers Group, which is a subject specialist network devoted to collections of global cultural heritage.
Process - we are here to work with you and can talk you through how the process of repatriation works at the University of Oxford. We will clarify the different stages and try to give you an idea of timescales.
If you would like to discuss the return of items from the collections, please email Marina de Alarcon, Curator and Head of Object Collections at marina.dealarcon@prm.ox.ac.uk.
