Young Conservative, socialist worker, country gentleman, healthy snack, community policing, military intelligence, traffic improvement scheme, banking service … The list of Morris Oxford MOxymorons grows longer by the day. And to its ignoble ranks we were just about to add ‘museum upgrade’. Until …
The old Museum of Oxford, founded fifty years ago in 1975, was squashed onto the corner of the Town Hall like some accidental civic afterthought. It could be reached only by descending a stone staircase to an underground vault. Dust seemed to hang in the air, the lighting was dim, and there were very few clues to tell you what you were looking at, let alone why you might be interested. (Remember: these were the innocent pre-‘signage’ days, long before anyone had gone on a ‘customer journey’ let alone enjoyed a ‘visitor experience’.) Everything was arranged in relentlessly chronological order, and, in the midst of it all, was a section from a medieval pavement constructed from animal knucklebones, alongside a giant Romano-British pottery kiln so big that it seemed to overwhelm everything else in the room.
We loved it.
So it was with considerable trepidation that we heard of the plans a few years ago to relocate and ‘refresh’ the museum; worse still talk of making it more ‘inclusive’, ‘accessible’ and ‘approachable’ for young people.
Our minds went back to the theme-show confection that was The Oxford Story. Trite. Gimmicky. Naff. (We’ve railed against it here.)
In the event we were more than mercifully relieved; we were positively impressed. The museum is pleasantly laid out, spacious without being minimal, interesting without being fussy, informative without being didactic, easy to explore without getting exhausted, and – yes – approachable, inclusive, and engaging.
It’s the same with Oxford’s other major collections, nearly all of which have had stylish make-overs within recent memory: the University Museum of Natural History with its soaring ironwork and world-famous Dodo; the Pitt Rivers – bulging with weird and wonderful artefacts; the History of Science Museum – home to Einstein’s Blackboard and 170 astrolabes; the Bate Collection of more than a thousand musical instruments; and of course the Ashmolean – the oldest and most venerable museum in the land.
The exhibition spaces in the Weston Library are an absolute triumph. Modern Art Oxford boasts a funky subterranean café – even if the upstairs spaces feel more cavernous than ever. And the Story Museum continues to evolve in colourful (albeit surprisingly pricey) ways.
Back to the Museum of Oxford. What’s to see there?
‘From football to fairgrounds, marmalade to Morris Motors, patron saints to pubs, barges, bones, and all types of quirky customs – there’s something for everyone’ in this ‘jewel of a museum’. So proclaims the website. Artefacts on display include, in no particular order: Oliver Cromwell’s death mask, the City Crest granted by Elizabeth I, a chunk from St Frideswide’s grave slab, and from the infamous Cutteslowe Walls (plus revolving metal spikes), a Headington United football shirt, Cold War instruments for measuring nuclear fallout, tickets from a Rolling Stones concert in Oxford (1964), Alice Liddell’s Red Cross medal, a copy of Pink Times, Oxford’s first LGBT broadsheet, an original penicillin culture vessel, and a tin of Frank Cooper’s marmalade retrieved from Captain Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the South Pole.
The building also hosts meeting spaces, workshop areas, a well-stocked gift shop, and a permanently changing exhibition. A number of public talks and walking tours are centred here, along with all sorts of community-outreach programmes.
Somehow the museum seems to bypass the hordes of glaze-eyed day-trippers and meandering language students, which is interesting given that our city-centre is increasingly drenched in tourists. We can’t help musing that, if council leader Susan Brown had got her way in 2020 and the infamous statue of Cecil Rhodes had been relocated here, the visitor footfall would have been spectacular.
Some of Oxford’s most intriguing display spaces are not located in museums of course – the medieval wall painting in the Golden Cross Pizza Express, the giant art installation in the JR, the sculpture garden behind Summertown Library, the archive display at OUP, C.S. Lewis’ house in Risinghurst, the tiny exhibition space round the back of Wytham Stores, and, greatest of all, the Rumble Museum** inside (yes, that’s right: inside) Cheney School …
But this merely goes to show how many diverse riches Oxford boasts and what a splendid job the people of the Museum of Oxford have done to curate them so imaginatively.
Oh – and rest assured: the Roman kiln may have gone (to the Museum Resource Centre in Standlake) but the knucklebone pavement is still there.
Feedback
Strange things can happen when you visit the Story Museum. Our thanks to Howard Stanbury.
Stephanie Jenkins writes:
The Museum of Oxford may not house the Roman kiln any more but it does have on display a significant piece of Roman pottery. Found on the site of the Churchill Hospital, it bears the name of the maker Tamesubugus: ‘Thames-dweller’, the first recorded name in the history of Oxford.
**A word more about the Rumble Museum. It is named in honour of Jamie Rumble, a young man who dedicated his life to working with disadvantaged young people. It is the only accredited museum in the entire country to be located on the premises of a state school. And it represents something extraordinary.
There is no museum building as such. Instead, every spare wall inside the school corridors houses a display cupboard in which are contained all sorts of objects: models of brains, pieces of ancient pottery, medical instruments… There is even a cabinet dedicated to Dystopian Fiction. Meanwhile, the playground outside is guarded by a series of robots (the legacy of a project on cyber technology). Everywhere you look, there’s something of interest, all very carefully and intelligently displayed.
There’s also a trail pointing out some of the magnificent trees which fringe the otherwise ordinary school buildings, and a set of mosaics familiarising the students with butterflies they might never have noticed.
The Rumble is remarkable in itself, and in its re-imagining of what a museum is, who it’s for, and how it might be approached. All hail to the diligence, the determination and the vision of its begetter and curator, Lorna Robinson, who has taught in the school for over a decade: Classics as it happens, another precious and endangered species.
And what about this sign at the playground entrance? Lorna Robinson explains.
The ‘bee line’ was created at the suggestion of the Year Eight Museum Council, who had the idea of a tube map that would take visitors to the ‘highlights’ of the museum. Each member of the council chose their favourite object which was then placed onto the map. The name is a play on the idea of ‘make a bee line for something’ and the line itself, as you can see, is striped like a bee!
Matthew Jenkinson is Head of New College School. He writes:
It’s not the smallest museum in the world (it’s bigger than Warley Museum, for instance, which is housed in a phone box), but it must be one of the smallest, and it would certainly have a claim to being the smallest museum in Oxford. It is a single room which can just about fit five or six people, so long as they don’t want to move around very much. It is located at the top of a New College house on New College Lane, a few feet from the Bridge of Sighs. The house is now mainly student accommodation, so you need to pass assorted vodka bottles and lingering Christmas decorations (I visited in May) to get there. You also need to ascend a somewhat perilous ladder-staircase (then later descend it again, which is an even more terrifying). Once you are up there, you can read some information about Edmond Halley, who spent much time here during his tenure as Savilian Professor of Astronomy, and you can examine an old telescope which looks out of the one remaining window (itself a replacement for the seventeenth century original). There used to be two additional windows, but the observatory was severely damaged in a storm.
Jane Kendall draws our attention to an important monument:
There’s so much to see inside the Natural History Museum you might well miss this stone in the grounds outside. It commemorates the momentous debate about evolution which took place in the building over 150 years ago: a world-changing moment in the history of ideas. Unfortunately, Oxford can claim neither Charles Darwin nor T.H. Huxley as an alumnus; but rather Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, who was on the wrong – albeit angelic – side of the argument.
