Oxford: Pitt Stop

If Joseph Conrad and the set designers of Raiders of the Lost Ark ever curated a museum, the result might be something like Oxford's Pitt Rivers, tel: (44-1865) 270927. Founded in 1884 by Lieut. General Pitt Rivers—Britain's first Inspector of Ancient Monuments—the Pitt Rivers Museum houses tens of thousands of anthropological artifacts in an atmosphere redolent with Victorian eccentricity. Wildly cluttered display cases and fading labels, handwritten in copperplate script, speak of the period's voraciously eclectic mania for collecting. In one spot there's a Tahitian mourner's costume, acquired during Captain Cook's second voyage of 1773; in another there are displays of...