First Year Trip to the Pitt Rivers Museum

When we arrived at the museum, all of us were glowing with excitement. The museum was very fascinating from the outside because ancient tree roots surrounded it.

After we had put away our blazers and bags, we were split into our art groups. Each group did an activity for one hour and then we swapped groups. In total there were three activities and a different art teacher led each of them.

With Miss Townsend we had to draw a Japanese mask. There were all kinds of masks, but none of them seemed joyful. Three of them looked as angry as a cat, which has been pulled by its tail. The other task from Miss Townsend was to make a drawing of a shrunken head! Yuck! I felt sick after drawing those, but I felt even worse when a man told me that they were real human heads from a long time ago.

For Miss Morgan we had to do a totally different thing (luckily). We had to draw three different patterns from three different things. At first the pattern I was doing seemed as easy as 1+1=2, but I was absolutely off the track. Usually, if you do a mistake in pencil you can easily rub it out, however in the museum you are not allowed to because it makes a mess. Besides, when I do something wrong, and can’t fix it, I get really frustrated.

Miss Alman’s task couldn’t get harder. Firstly we had to find an object that we would find in a kitchen. That wasn’t that hard actually. Then draw it. The one I found wasn’t that easy to draw, but it was even more complicated when it came to coloring it in. I had a great problem with that because Miss Alman didn’t have the colour my object was. Next we had to draw an object which has food painted on it. Drawing wasn’t the first problem; the problem was finding this object. It took me a great deal of time searching. I only found it in a little corner.

When at last it was time for lunch, I was as hungry as a wolf. We had to eat outside otherwise we would have made the museum staff do an extra job. The job was cleaning up the floor from crumbs.  To our delight the weather was stunning.

At the end of the day we were extremely tired. Well, at least I was, the rest were all giggling and telling each other interesting things which had happened in their groups. It was sad to leave this joyful place. I wish we could go there once more.

By Mariya Ilina 1X