It was a pleasure to celebrate the opening of the University of Oxford’s Collections Teaching and Research Centre (CTRC) on Monday, following its first teaching session over the weekend.
Designed by fjcstudio as part of our transformation of the Reuben College buildings, the CTRC now houses over one million objects from the Ashmolean Museum, the History of Science Museum, the Museum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers Museum, bringing collections from all four institutions together for the first time.
The Centre sits beneath the Bodleian’s Radcliffe Science Library in central Oxford, within the Grade II listed buildings we adapted for Reuben College, the University’s first new college in nearly 30 years. Its location, beside the Museum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers Museum, keeps the collections close to the curators and conservators who care for them.
Bespoke storage for each collection, with modern environmental controls, provides the right conditions for object care, including dedicated arrangements for textiles, metalwork, sculpture and mixed media. Alongside storage, the Centre provides facilities for collections care, object-based teaching and research. Its digitisation lab also supports DiSSCo, the Distributed System of Scientific Collections, through Oxford’s partnership with Cambridge, making natural science collections digitally accessible for research into conservation, land management and food security.
The opening follows two years of painstaking work by the museum teams to relocate the collections. It was lovely to celebrate with those whose knowledge and dedication have made this possible.
Our work across museums, galleries, libraries and special collections centres on this relationship between caring for collections and making them accessible. It is rewarding to see the Centre now supporting teaching, research and discovery for students, academics and specialist groups.
Christine Kwong, Principal, fjcstudio
