Fingerprints
Every object in the Ashmolean has passed from hand to hand to reach the Museum. In a new podcast, we uncover the invisible fingerprints left behind by makers, looters, archaeologists, soldiers, rulers, curators, and many more. These stories of touch reveal the ways in which the forces of conflict and colonialism have shaped Britain’s oldest Museum. Join the Ashmolean’s curators alongside artists, experts, and community members. Fingerprints will be released on the Ashmolean’s website, on Spotify, Apple, and wherever you get your podcasts, weekly from 21 January 2022 until 25 February 2022. Guests include Bénédicte Savoy, co-author of the Report on African Cultural Heritage, commissioned by Emmanuel Macron; Professor Dan Hicks, of Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum; and Simukai Chigudu, one of the founding members of the Rhodes Must Fall campaign.
Episodes
7 episodes
6. Competitive Collecting and Suspicious Shipwrecks
Fingerprints Episode 6The country’s first major art and antiquities collection now sits in the Ashmolean Museum. It reveals untold stories from the ancient world including shipwrecks, competitively collecting, underhand dealings ...
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Season 1
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Episode 6
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38:39
5. Hunting the Minotaur
Fingerprints Episode 5Curator Andrew Shapland shows us a tiny fragment which reveals the story of the man who set out to hunt down the mythical minotaur. Sir Arthur Evans went on to become known as the father of archa...
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Season 1
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Episode 5
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45:32
4. A King from the Trenches
Fingerprints Episode 4Curator Paul Collins takes us on a journey with a 3000 year old king uncovered by an Indian soldier digging a trench in World War I, and explore what he has to tell us about the formation of Iraq as a nation...
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Season 1
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Episode 4
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38:12
3. Displaying People
Fingerprints Episode 3Mallica Kumbera Landrus, the Ashmolean’s Keeper of Eastern Art, takes us on a journey with 200 clay figures from India, displayed alongside a human zoo at the Colonial and India Exhibition of 1886, and later...
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Season 1
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Episode 3
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34:15
2. The Looted Masks
Fingerprints Episode 2Dan Hicks takes us on a journey with three bronze masks from the West African city of Benin, through the hands of soldiers, collectors, and curators, and along with special guests considers the responsibilit...
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Season 1
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Episode 2
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59:38
1. A Place For Questioning
Fingerprints Episode 1Join the Ashmolean Museum’s director, Xa Sturgis, as he questions what a museum is for. He introduces us to Powhatan’s Mantle, one of the museum’s founding objects, and one inextricably linked with British c...
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Season 1
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Episode 1
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1:01:52
Fingerprints trailer – a new Ashmolean podcast starting 21 January
Every object in the Ashmolean has passed from hand to hand to reach the Museum. In a new podcast, we uncover the invisible fingerprints left behind by makers, looters, archaeologists, soldiers, rulers, curators, and many more. These stories of ...
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Season 1
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2:01