Shrunken Heads, Enchanted Amulets, and Pickled Penises: Victorian Anthropology and the Collections of Augustus Pitt Rivers

An Illustrated Lecture with Dr. Maeve Adams, Manhattan College

This event is sponsored by-and drinks provided by-The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research 

Date: Friday, March 27th
Time: 8pm
Admission: $10 ( Tickets Here )
Location: Morbid Anatomy Museum, 424 Third Avenue, 11215 Brooklyn.

The Pitt Rivers Museum was founded in Oxford in 1884 by Lt-General Augustus Pitt Rivers to house and display his enormous collection of rarities and oddities from around the world. An officer in Queen Victoria’s imperial Army, Lt- General Pitt River was a voracious collector, gathering objects from every corner of the globe, often through bribery, swindling, and (probably) outright theft. His military rank gave him access to and authority over people who, willingly or unwillingly, parted with all manner of sacred relics, archeological treasures, medical specimens, tools of ritual sacrifice, spoils of war, and much more.

Taking a virtual tour of the museum, this talk will address individual objects from the collections—examples of the bizarre, the macabre, and the exotic—and consider not only what is displayed but how those objects are displayed. The system of arrangement invented by Pitt Rivers and retained by the museum to this day, involved cramming as many examples of different kinds of things into glass cases, which bear labels like “Smoking and Stimulants,” “Body Art, Jewelry and Accessories,” and “Knuckledusters and Wrist Knives.” We will examine this display strategy in the context of other Victorian innovations in collecting, including spectacles like the Freak Show, the Circus, and the World’s Fair. Acknowledging that Lt-General Pitt Rivers was no mere showman, we will also consider the lasting contribution he made to the modern discipline of Anthropology.

Maeve Adams is an Assistant Professor of Victorian Literature at Manhattan College. She completed her PhD in Nineteenth-Century British Literature and Culture at New York University. She writes about the histories of science, rhetoric and politics. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner Robin.