Behind the scenes at Oxford’s Museums
04 Dec 07
A new exhibition opened at the Pitt Rivers Museum on 1 December featuring work by artists and community groups showing life Behind the Façade at Oxford University’s four museums.
Artists Leora Brook and Tiffany Black, known as brook & black, spent time behind the scenes in the University’s Museums talking to and photographing staff at work. They were joined by local community groups, who observed and recorded activity usually hidden behind closed doors.
Brook and Black’s work went on display at the Pitt Rivers on 1 December. Commenting on the exhibition they said: ‘The museum is a container of historical objects and experiences, of lives lived, both past and present. Here, value is extended beyond objects to the hands of those that work with them, offering a more immediate physical presence and acknowledgement of the lives being lived within the museum.’
Four local community groups worked alongside the artists, including the Oxford Nightshelter at the Ashmolean; the PLD Group Bicester at the Museum of the history of Science; Oxpots at the Museum of Natural History and Fitzwaryn School at the Pitt Rivers Museum. The images put together by these groups went on display at the Museum of Natural History from 1 December and will also be shown at the Museum of the History of Science from 7 December.
Behind the Façade is part of the 'Oxfordshire Reflections’ programme, a strand of arts projects for Oxfordshire 2007 financially supported by the National Lottery and Arts Council England, co-ordinated by Oxfordshire County Council. The work is also being presented on the Artefact online gallery: see link to the right.