Pitt Rivers

and of the museums themselves. Dr. Jane Samson explains her involvement with this process and the origin of this website.

I am writing a book about Victorian missionaries as anthropologists in the south Pacific. The Pitt Rivers Museum's "Relational Museum" project encouraged me to explore more fully the identity of these missionaries as collectors and interpreters of material culture. At a symposium held at the Museum in 2005, I and a number of other scholars presented our research into the complex relationships surrounding museums, objects and visitors. It was exciting to meet anthropologists, museologists, philosophers and administrators (as well as other historians), and to share insights across disciplines and national boundaries. After the symposium, Alison Petch and I discussed the creation of a website to talk about the "poisoned arrows" I had discussed in my presentation. This website is the result, thanks to the talents of Matthew and Katalin Wangler, and to support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the University of Alberta.

For more on the "Relational Museum", see The Infinity Machine by project team members Chris Gosden, Fran Larson and Alison Petch, to be published by Oxford University Press in 2007. Papers from the "Relational Museum" symposium will also be published, and this site will be updated when publication information becomes available.