Makers and Fakers: How copies, replicas, casts and fakes ‘make’ museum collections
As part of the Oxford-wide ‘April Fakes Day’ join ‘Making the Museum’ researcher Dr Beth Hodgett and Zine collective Imperfect Bound (@ImperfectBound) to explore the stories behind the hundreds of copies, casts, replicas and fakes in the Pitt Rivers Museum collection. How do these often-neglected objects help us think differently about the relationship between making and museums? And how can making Zines* challenge us to reconsider ideas of ‘authenticity’, ‘originality’ and creativity?
Learn about the lives of the Pitt Rivers Museum’s ‘Makers and Fakers’—like the infamous forger of prehistoric artefacts Flint Jack—in a behind-the-scenes tour of the object collections, before heading downstairs to the Old Library to design and make pages for a collaborative Zine which will be accessioned into the Pitt Rivers Museum Balfour Library. Selected pages from the Zine will also feature in a forthcoming academic journal, and be incorporated into our ‘Making the Museum’ exhibition.
*Zines (pronounced Zeens) are small self-published magazines or pamphlets, traditionally made using techniques like collage and print-making. Hand-made original pages are assembled into a final running order before being photocopied or risograph printed to reproduce them on a larger scale at very low cost. This home-made approach—which often borrows or reproduces images and text from professionally published media—has a rich history of allowing counter-cultural self-expression as well as having a loose relationship to traditional scholarly concerns like copyright.
Booking is required for the behind-the-scenes tour. But please drop-in to the Zine making workshop—no need to book!
WHERE: The Old Library, Pitt Rivers Museum, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PP
WHEN: Sunday April 6th 2025.
Behind the Scenes Tours: 12:30-13:00 and 14:00-14:30 - click here to book.
Zine Making Workshop: 13:00-16:00
Part of April Fakes Day 2025 | Find out more about fakes
