Meet Marenka Thompson-Odlum, Research Curator (Critical Perspectives) at the Pitt Rivers Museum
Marenka work focuses on the problematic use of language within the Pitt Rivers Museum's displays and finding new ways of decolonising through re-imagining the definition of a label. She shared her hope of making the Pitt Rivers Museum a more positive and comforting space for visitors and scholars alike.
…it's about creating a space for more voices, more people, and that's really joyous. It's not about loss it's actually about gain.
Marenka Thompson-Odlum
Research Curator (Critical Perspectives) at the Pitt Rivers Museum
Tell us about the work you’re doing.
“My work at the Pitt Rivers Museum was initially on the Labelling Matters project, which was an overview survey of all the problematic language used within the Museum's displays, and even the cataloguing system. Then it grew to also working with various community and indigenous groups, doing new contemporary collecting as a different form of labelling and telling the stories within the museum.”
How is your work making Oxford or the Pitt Rivers Museum more inclusive?
“We’re making the Museum a more inclusive space because it is about making it a safer space for all our visitors and audiences. We are a museum that houses objects and material culture from almost every single country in the world, and various cultural groups, so it's really important for us to tell their stories, their truths as well as they can be told.
We’re decentering very Eurocentric views at the same time and trying to dismantle the harmful language that we use within the museum. This Museum is very much from the colonial era and so my work is trying to make it more inclusive, through telling those stories.”
What is your goal for the project?
“My goal is to make the Pitt Rivers, and the wider Oxford community, a more inclusive space; a place of joy. We often think of work about inclusivity, and decolonization work in particular, as a space of sadness and really hard. And it is hard, it takes a lot of work. But at the end of it, it's about creating a space for more voices, more people.
“Thinking about all the different kind of communities, and their histories, that embody this space, the Pitt Rivers was very much founded in the colonial era so it's about bringing their stories, their perspectives within the space so it's not as damaging as it is now… it's about creating a space for more voices, more people, and that's really joyous, it's not about loss it's actually about gain.”
