'Stereotypes' row could cost me my role at museum, says Alice Plunkett

Woke ‘colonial stereotypes’ storm over shrunken heads could cost me my role at museum, says TV star Alice Plunkett

  • The ITV Racing star is a board member of the Pitt Rivers Museum
  • She got on the board after marrying the great-great grandson of its founder 

TV presenter Alice Plunkett has defended a museum embroiled in a ‘colonial stereotypes’ row over its collection of shrunken heads.

The ITV Racing star is a board member of the Pitt Rivers Museum after marrying the great-great grandson of its founder General Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers.

The institution in Oxford hit the headlines three years ago when directors removed the heads, some of its most viewed items.

And staff continuing their attempts to ‘decolonise’ the museum are in the processing of returning artefacts known as the Benin Bronzes to Nigeria. However, critics say the moves are an over-reaction and could be seen as ‘rewriting history’.

Ms Plunkett, 58 – whose husband William Fox-Pitt is, like her, a former equestrian – fears that a split in opinions among members of the anthropological museum over its colonial past may force her out of her position in future.

TV presenter Alice Plunkett has defended a museum embroiled in a ‘colonial stereotypes’ row over its collection of shrunken heads

Ms Plunkett, 58 – whose husband William Fox-Pitt is, like her, a former equestrian – fears that a split in opinions among members of the anthropological museum over its colonial past may force her out of her position in future 

Speaking at the Chalke Valley History Festival, sponsored by the Daily Mail, she said she’d thought ‘long and hard’ before joining the museum’s development advisory board. She said she chose to because General Pitt Rivers had been motivated by improving education and access to artefacts, rather than ‘treasure hunting’.

She said the 19th century founder of the institution was simply a ‘man of his time’ – and stressed that his collection was not obtained through ‘smash and grab’ techniques.

She added: ‘I feel comfortable in supporting the Pitt Rivers Museum and trying to help it. Not everyone on the board is in the same place as me and it’s a continual conversation.

‘And it’s something that, you know, may mean that I can’t stay there because there is such a push in other directions.

‘But for me, because of the work and the knowledge and understanding that I have of this guy [General Pitt Rivers] that’s helped me reconcile and feel more comfortable with that collection.’

Addressing the broader issue of whether traditional museums were being undermined by curators acting as activists, Ms Plunkett said: ‘I may be absolutely wrong, but I think things have their time and to judge people from their time is a very challenging thing to do.

‘You can’t compare times. That’s not to say that there aren’t apologies to be made and there aren’t things that need to be looked at very hard.’

Ethnologist and archaeologist General Pitt Rivers, whose global collection of 22,000 objects founded the museum, was known to study phrenology, a pseudoscience which involved analysing the skulls of different ethnicities and is now considered racist.

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