Oxford Tourist Information

Moʻolelo of the Ahupuaʻa A Re-imagined Journey into a Hawaiian Ecosystem
2023-06-16 - 2026-04-05 | Pitt Rivers Museum, S Parks Rd, Oxford
Mo‘olelo of the Ahupuaʻa tells the various stories of living, working, playing and learning within a sustainable landscape.

These are themes within the epic Hawaiian myth Hiʻiakaikapoliopele, which Hawaiian artist Solomon Enos depicts in this series of paintings. The heroine Hiʻiaka is on a quest that takes her throughout the various landscapes and worlds of the islands. On the way she encounters an underground hidden world of shape-shifting insect/arachnid-people, who invite her to share their plentiful resources.
The seven paintings that feature in this display are from a wider series, following from a previous display which highlighted the Hawaiian tradition of mo‘olelo, a way of storing and sharing Hawaiian cultural memory that guides future generations in understanding the world. In each painting the artist re-imagines this hidden world, creating an entomological character based on a Hawaiian species. Like these species, each has an important role to play in this eco-system and has the relevant clothing and implements. This display draws on the theme the Ahupuaʻa – a traditional Hawaiian land division that runs from the mountain tops to the sea embracing the ecosystems within, and introduces further characters from Solomon Enos’ imagining of the Hiʻiakaikapoliopele.

Stories around a Feather Cloak
2024-06-12 - 2026-06-07 | Pitt Rivers Museum, S Parks Rd, Oxford
At the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, England, you can see a beautiful Ahu’ula, a feather cloak from Hawaii. It is on display on the ground floor, in a case that has a curtain covering the glass, which when drawn back reveals the striking yellow, red and black design worked in tiny feathers. Draw back the curtain to see the feather cloaks on display and read the interpretation to learn how these Ahu ‘ula (cloaks) were used to reinforce political and diplomatic transactions, solidify relationships, and engender obligations. This feather cloak inspired the original commission for the Poakalani Quilting group, who went on to make fifteen quilts for the museum, which are on display in the special exhibition, Hawai’i Ma uka to Ma kai: Quilting the Hawaiian Landscape.

Hawaii: Ma uka to Ma kai Quilting the Hawaiian Landscape
2024-06-12 - 2026-05-07 | Pitt Rivers Museum, S Parks Rd, Oxford
The ahupua‘a, a land division extending from the mountains to the sea, has long been the cornerstone of sustainable land management for Kanaka Maoli (Hawaiian) communities. “Ma uka” (toward the mountains) and “Ma kai” (toward the sea) are not merely directional references; they signify a deep understanding of care and access to natural and cultural resources within these regions.
Through a combination of contemporary and historic mea noʻeau (skillfully created works) this special exhibition explores the past, present, and future of the ahupua‘a system. Hawaiian quilts by the Honolulu-based Poakalani Quilters are curated in narrative that follows the ahupua‘a and the people working with the landscape, from mountain forests to the coastal waters, and as well as introducing the Hawaiian royal history of the palatial grounds of their group meeting place.
Join us on a journey through time through the ahupua‘a in this special exhibition: witness the disruption of indigenous practices over the past 150 years, accompanied by a decline in Hawaiian ecosystems, alongside stories of resilience and restoration. Travelling from Ma uka to Ma kai, discover efforts of contemporary practitioners who embrace 21st-century sustainable stewardship, and how looking back towards traditional practices offers a glimpse into a future of abundance and harmony between communities and their environment.

Hulu Nēnē By MANAOLA
2024-06-12 - 2026-05-07 | Pitt Rivers Museum, S Parks Rd, Oxford
Discover the beautifully sculptural Hulu Nēnē dress by fashion icon Manaola Yap, a designer and cultural practitioner from Hawaiʻi, within the Pitt Rivers Museum galleries.
Displayed in a case in near the centre of the museum court on the ground floor, this installation is part of the journey through the Hawaiian landscape offered through the museum’s current special exhibition Hawaii: Ma uk to Ma kai.
Through the special collection of their designs, Manaola honors and pays homage to the great warrior chief, Kamehameha, Pai`ea. Born on Hawai`i Island in secrecy and taken to safety by a swift runner to the high cliffs of `Awini Kohala, the infant king was hidden in the caves to escape the order of Alapa`i Nui that the infant be put to death. The Designer gains his inspiration from ancestral chants, and stories speaking of the youthful years of the royal child.

Revisiting Robert Louis Stevenson in the Pacific
2024-06-12 - 2026-06-07 | Pitt Rivers Museum, S Parks Rd, Oxford
In this Archive Case display, artists Simon Grennan and Solomon Enos re-examine the work of nineteenth century author Robert Louis Stevenson through dynamic graphic storytelling. Stevenson travelled to several Pacific islands before settling in Sāmoa in 1890. Referencing this time in Sāmoa, as well as Hawai’i and Europe, related items are brought together from the Museum’s Pacific collections and displayed alongside historical publications of Stevenson’s Pacific stories, set within new graphic remediations of these stories as comics by British and Hawaiian artists. The illustration-led display explores the journey of ideas across media (remediation) in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, Robert Louis Stevenson’s fascination with ‘the foreign’, and post-colonialism in the Pacific, including new poetry focused on Hawaiian, Samoan and European post-colonialism.
The display at the Pitt Rivers Museum celebrates work that is part of a wider research project ‘Remediating Stevenson’, led by a UK research team (Michelle Keown, Shari Sabeti and Alice Kelly, Edinburgh University; and Simon Grennan, Chester University), in partnership with the National University of Sāmoa. The project explores Robert Louise Stevenson’s Pacific fiction, travels, and friendship with Indigenous Pacific communities. The Remediating Robert Louis Stevenson project is producing the first ever multilingual graphic adaptation of the three stories from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Island Nights’ Entertainments (1893). The project is also commissioning new poetry by indigenous Pacific authors, and developing a set of accompanying teaching resources for use in Sāmoa, Hawai’i and Scotland through participatory arts workshops and film-making.

Unfinished - a poem by Carol Ann Carl
2024-06-12 - 2026-06-07 | Pitt Rivers Museum, S Parks Rd, Oxford
Unfinished is a poem written by Carol Ann Carl, a daughter of the island of Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia. With a background in Biochemistry and health, her community work revolves around Micronesian youth and women. Carol Ann was entrusted to be the keeper of traditional origin stories, which she shares through her writings. Storytelling and writing are personal forms of pedagogical healing.
Unfinished was commissioned by Marenka Thompson-Odlum, as part of the Digital Engagement & Innovation project. It exists both as written ‘concrete’ poetry and as a recorded spoken word piece. Unfinished is written from the perspective of the 31 pearl shell tools that the museum has described as ‘unfinished shell shanks of a fishing hook’ which were taken from the King’s tomb at the archaeological site of Nan Madol on Pohnpei. Nan Madol is a series of more than 100 islets off the south-east coast of Pohnpei that were constructed with walls of basalt and coral boulders. These islets harbour the remains of stone palaces, temples, tombs and residential domains built between 1100 and 1500 CE. These ruins represent the ceremonial centre of the Saudeleur dynasty, a vibrant period in Pacific Island culture. The huge scale of the edifices, their technical sophistication and the concentration of megalithic structures bear testimony to complex social and religious practices of the island societies of the period.
The field collector of the shell shanks, Frederick William Christian, was a graduate of Balliol College, Oxford. In his 1899 book, The Caroline Islands: Travel in the Sea of the Little Lands, he recounts the excavation of ‘Eighty pearl-shell shanks of fish-hooks in a more or less perfect condition, exactly resembling those used all over Polynesia before the coming of the white man. The hook itself was generally of bone, but we found some fragments of pearl-shell which were clearly relics of the barb.’
Christian was also a close friend of Robert Louis Stevenson when he lived in the neighbouring Pacific Island of Samoa. It was Stevenson who encouraged Christian to travel to remote groups of Pacific islands and study their languages. In his books, he often references Stevenson’s works such as Beach of Falesá.

PAT SUET-BIK HUI & THE THREE PERFECTIONS
2025-09-20 - 2026-06-28 | Ashmolean Museum, Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, OX1 2PH, United Kingdom
FREE EXHIBITION

20 Sep 2025 to 28 Jun 2026
Gallery 11
Admission is FREE

Pat Suet-Bik Hui 許雪碧 (b. 1943) is a US-based Hong Kong artist. This exhibition showcases her work alongside others who engage with the tradition of the ‘three perfections’ 三絕, which brings together the three art forms of poetry, calligraphy, and painting.
The exhibition includes works by Hui, her contemporaries, her teacher Lui Shou-Kwan and others of his generation, as well as earlier examples from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Seeing Hui alongside these other artists will give visitors the context to understand her as both innovator and standard-bearer of tradition.
In this tradition, calligraphic brushstrokes are as integral to compositional balance as those used in painting. Likewise, images conjured by a poem and those rendered in a painting combine to create effects neither can achieve alone.
Hui’s modern interpretation fuses abstract and semi-abstract washes of colour and ink with simple, restrained calligraphy inscribing poems reflecting on a variety of themes, from love, to loss, to the pleasures of drinking.

Painting with Poem by Xin Qiji, Pat Suet-Bik Hui & Wucius Wong, 1987, ink & colour on paper © Ashmolean Museum

Painting with poem by Paul Ka-Yin Kwok, Pat Suet-Bik Hui & Paul Ka-Yin Kwok, 1999, ink colour on paper © Ashmolean Museum

Painting with poem by Nara Singde, Pat Suet-Bik Hui, 1991, ink & colour on paper © Ashmolean Museum

In the exhibition gallery there will be translations of many of the poems inscribed on the paintings, as well as guidance on how to interpret the relationship between painting, calligraphy and poetry within particular works.
Hui gifted her works to the art-historian Michael Sullivan, whose painting collection was bequeathed to the Ashmolean in 2013.

With these Hands: Crafting a Shared Humanity
2025-11-08 - 2026-11-08 | Pitt Rivers Museum, S Parks Rd, Oxford
With these Hands is a co-produced gallery trail created by a multicultural team of volunteers who share an interest in the hand-crafted.

Through the objects chosen and the stories told, you are invited to learn more about the way we craft and make in different cultures. Objects and storytelling enabling us to engage in shared experiences, emotions and ideas.

Objects tell human stories
They speak of hardship and dignity, of celebration, and resistance

The trail has nine stops around the Museum galleries, with five of the nine stops on the ground floor, three on the first floor and one on the second floor. We encourage visitors to use the trail map, starting on the first floor, moving up to the second floor and then finishing on the ground floor.
This trail was created as part of Multaka-Oxford. Our co-curators went on a journey together working closely with the museum collections and teams of experts. They have all thought deeply about the stories their chosen objects inspired.

It's not just black and white: Renaissance and Baroque drawings in chalk and charcoal
2025-11-15 11:00 - 17:00, 2025-11-16 11:00 - 17:00, 2025-11-17 11:00 - 17:00, 2025-11-18 11:00 - 17:00, 2025-11-19 11:00 - 17:00, 2025-11-20 11:00 - 17:00, 2025-11-21 11:00 - 17:00, 2025-11-22 11:00 - 17:00 (Europe/London) and 13 more dates | Christ Church Picture Gallery, Canterbury Gate, Oxford, OX1 4EP
Venue, Timing and Cost

Venue:

Christ Church Picture Gallery

Date(s):

Saturday, 15 November 2025 to Thursday, 26 March 2026

Timing:

Mon,Wed,Thu,Fri,Sat: 11am-5pm Sun:2pm-5pm Closed Tuesdays

Cost:

£6/3/0

Continuing the Picture Gallery’s exhibition series on materials and materiality of Renaissance and Baroque drawings, this show explores black chalk and charcoal. A medium that began to flourish in the late fifteenth century and has become the workhorse of drawing utensils. While the material and technique are the focus of the exhibition, it also offers the opportunity to display some of the Picture Gallery’s finest and most famous drawings, including works by Leonardo, Bronzino, Sodoma, Tintoretto, Carracci, and many lesser-known, yet remarkable, artists.

Further Information

Contact Details:

Christ Church Picture Gallery
Gallery entrance via Canterbury Gate at Oriel Square
Oxford OX1 4EP
Website: https://www.chch.ox.ac.uk/visit/picture-…
Tel: 01865 276172
Email: picturegallery@chch.ox.ac.uk
Copyright & Credits: Courtesy of the Governing Body of Christ Church, Oxford
Usage & Restrictions: For Promotional Use Only – For non-commercial use only

ROMAN OXFORDSHIRE COINS DISPLAY
2025-12-06 - 2026-11-29 | Ashmolean Museum, Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, OX1 2PH, United Kingdom
6 Dec 2025 – 29 Nov 2026
Gallery 7
Admission is FREE

Coinage remains one of the best represented and most recognisable elements of Roman material culture.
This display will showcase a selection of Roman coins in the Ashmolean collection that were found in Oxfordshire and tell the story of the region from the Roman conquest in 43 CE to the end of Roman Britain, around 410 CE.
Some of the coins reflect everyday life through trade, soldiers’ pay, or the collection of taxes. Others tell us about Britain’s position in the empire or served as offerings people made to the gods.
Discover a group of Iron Age gold staters buried in a flint nodule around the time of the Roman invasion, known as the Henley Hoard, and various Roman coins from Claudius I to the end of Roman Britain. These historic finds were discovered in local towns and villages, such as Cowley, Dorchester, Asthall, Horton, Shiplake and Childrey, and add to the evidence for coin use and circulation in Roman Oxfordshire.

Map (detail) accompanying the Roman Oxfordshire coins display in the Money Gallery

Roman coins were an important means of communication. They were carried across the empire in purses, spreading images and messages central to Roman society: religion, politics, the Imperial family, or the empire’s prosperity. As with modern money, most Roman coins also had more straightforward messages, showing exactly who held power.
These coins are not always beautiful objects, but each is a small, powerful voice connecting us to the people of Roman Oxfordshire and their place in the wider Roman world.
Header image: Obverse and reverse detail of silver coin of Carausius © Ashmolean Museum

Found anything locally?
Since 1997, the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) has recorded more than 360,000 Roman coins from England and Wales, including nearly 15,000 from Oxfordshire.
If you think you may have found a Roman coin, it’s important to have it properly recorded. Contact your local Finds Liaison Officer at the PAS

SELECTED OBJECTS ON DISPLAY

Silver coin of Carausius

Silver coin of Roman Emperor Carausius, found at Shiplake, with a wolf and the twins Romulus and Remus on the reverse, 286–293 CE © Ashmolean Museum

Copper coin of Nero

Copper coin depicting Nero, found at Dorchester on Thames, 65 CE © Ashmolean Museum

Henley Hoard

Henley Hoard

Henley Hoard

Complete local Iron Age coin hoard of 32 gold staters buried in a flintstone nodule, found in Henley-on-Thames, 55–45 BCE © Ashmolean Museum

Silver coin of Arcadius

Silver coin of Roman Emperor Arcadius, found at Horton, 392–394 CE © Ashmolean Museum

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