CENTER AND FAR RIGHT: Totem pole in the Pitt Rivers Museum and a full view showing its place in the museum installation. © Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. 52 ABOVE AND LEFT: Interior view of the Chauvet Cave with paintings. © Jean Clottes—Ministère de la Culture. The reproduction of the Chauvet Cave under construction. © DR. MUSEUM news HAIDA POST Oxford—Until September 28, the Pitt Rivers Museum is focusing on the exceptional Haida totem pole that for more than a century has presided over its courtyard. The pole came from the village of Masset in British Columbia, Canada, and was acquired in 1901 by then curator Edward Burnett Tylor. The figures seen on it, which include an impressive raven’s head, refer to the lineage of Chief Anetlas and his wife, who had the post sculpted to celebrate the adoption of a daughter. A series of documents included in Star House Pole: Early Images of the Haida Totem Pole in the Pitt Rivers Museum provide a better idea of the sculpture’s complex history. Photographs of the village taken around 1880 show it still in place in front of the chief’s house, while sketches and illustrations taken from twentieth-century publications show images of the totem when it was installed in the museum. Tylor’s correspondence sheds light on the years of negotiation that were needed to finalize its purchase. All of this archival material provides a fascinating window into the early days of anthropology and collecting. SAN ART OF BOTSWANA Cambridge—The contemporary creations of the San artists of Botswana draw their inspiration from ancient traditions such as wall painting, which is practiced all over South Africa, as well as from more specific traditions, such as bead working. While San works often deal with centuries old subjects of the hunt, the harvest, and the ancestors, many are now beginning to reflect themes such as exclusion, saving the environment, and gaining access to resources. Crafting Colour: Beads, Pattern, and Painting from the Kalahari, an exhibition organized by the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge, offers its visitors the opportunity to see the luminous and colorful compositions that have been produced during the last twenty-five years, as well as black-and-white photographs taken in the 1930s that document the lives of the San people as they were at that time. Above and beyond their aesthetic qualities, the selected works poignantly illustrate a people’s attachment to its roots while it searches for ways to meet the challenges that force it to reinvent itself. The exhibition is on view until September 28. THE CHAUVET CAVE Ardèche—The Cave of Chauvet-Pont d’Arc, better known as the Chauvet Cave, in the Ardèche Valley of southern prehistoric France is a unique testament to the art of wall painting and is a true jewel of human culture. The works on the cave’s walls are some 36,000 years old and depict include more than 1,000 drawings, of which 425 animals. The site remained undisturbed for millennia until it was discovered in 1994. The age, the state of preservation, and the wealth of artistic representations on its research walls make it an inexhaustible source for scientific for scholars the world over. The cave’s treasures will soon be accessible to the public thanks to a reproduction of it—the largest reproduction of a painted cave in the world—which will show the paintings, engravings, and artifacts full size in an environment identical to that of the real cave. While this replica is not scheduled to open until spring 2015, the original surrounding cave, along with the landscape immediately it, this last June was designated as a UNESCO World international Heritage site. This is now the oldest site the organization protects.
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