Pitt Rivers is a museum where a viewer is confronted by these questions in nearly every display. Yesterday we met with one of the Pitt Rivers education staff who primed the students on the history of the museum and the problematic legacy that staff members are wrestling with in their work. Historically, many of the displays were premised on socioevolutionary premises that perceived western culture as the pinnacle of technological achievement and scientific knowledge, treating non-western communities as \u201cprimitive\u201d or \u201csavage\u201d (words that one can still find on some of the 19^{th<\/sup> century labels in the collection). The museum charter constrains what staff are permitted to do with the collection, so decolonizing the space is not as simple as it first appears. When staff discover that an artifact in their collection was acquired illicitly, the desire is to return the artifact to whom it rightfully belongs. But how does one determine who should get the artifact when the chain of ownership is not obvious? It is to the credit of the museum staff that they directly acknowledge some of the moral problems that plague the museum\u2019s history; the staff has been quite proactive in raising these moral questions directly for museumgoers. An increasing number of displays include narration that draws the viewer into a more critical assessment of what they are seeing. The shrunken heads that were once on public display in the museum section on death rituals has been removed, replaced with a sign that details the reasons why the museum has made this change to the display. In recent years the museum has invited representatives and scholars from non-western communities to contribute to the reinterpretation of displays in ways that capture the voice of communities that historically have been represented through western eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n}

The visit to Pitt Rivers was a great opportunity to get students outside of my ethics classroom in a way that I really believe will contribute to their learning. It\u2019s one of the greatest benefits of studying abroad, where the world outside of the lecture hall becomes the classroom.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n