Late Nights

Late Nights

Join us at the Museum after hours!

The Pitt Rivers Museum regularly hosts after-hours events, including late night openings, exhibition viewings, live music gigs, and private dinners and functions.

Check out our events listings to see details of any upcoming late night events!

Please note: Our late night openings are sometimes jointly hosted with the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, whilst others are exclusive to the Pitt Rivers Museum. For joint events all normal museum entrances will be open. For exclusive events, late night entry is via the South Entrance on Robinson Close.

Want to collaborate on a public after-hours event?

Contact our public engagement team.

Want to host your own private event at the museum?

Contact our hire team.

A Century of Sounds: Live

27 February 2026

Celebrating the Museum's collaboration with 100 artists from around the world to create responses to our incredible and diverse sound collections. Featuring live performances from Cities and Memory, Cristina Italiani, Kid Kin, Masako Yokouchi, Rebecca Denniff, and Simon Holmes which reimagine different ethnographic sounds from the Museum collections, ranging from conch shell performances in Vanuatu to traditional music from Afghanistan, South Sudanese warrior songs and wedding music from the Himalayas.

Listen to all 100 compositions on the Museum's 'sound shower'.

With These Hands: Crafting a Shared Humanity

7 November 2025

Celebrating crafting from around the world, featuring a mix of activities including Chinese keepsake, Ukrainian Motanka doll, and fashion flower sessions designed and delivered by Multaka volunteers. Also including talks and object handling sessions with the Culture Club and a focus on photography and Camera Obscura in collaboration with the History of Science Museum.

Featuring an afrobeats and RnB soundtrack DJ'd by Inspire Sounds and a pop-up bar hosted by local social enterprise brewery Tap Social.

Climate Justice

6 June 2025

An evening focussed on climate change, biodiversity loss, social justice and how we can all be part of a better future for our planet. Taking on a film festival feel, we screened Itu Ninu by Itandehui Jansen, Climate Criminals? by CHANGE Festival, Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes by Jonas Staal and Radha D'Souza, Woven Together by ClimArts, Come Gleaning by Empathy Media, and The Tapestry of Hope and Letters from the Future by Tamarack Media. We also projected photography by RHRN Photography4Humanity.

Spiers & Boden: Live Gig at the Museum

22 February 2025

In collaboration with Live to your Living Room the much-loved duo Spiers & Boden performed a gig like no other in the museum space! Live music against the museum's stunning backdrop, available both in-person and streamed direct to viewers at home. Live to your Living Room created a seamless hybrid in-person and virtual event, capturing both audiences flawlessly and creating an unforgettable gig experience.

Interested in performing in the museum space? Get in touch!

Aloha - The Art of Storytelling

8 November 2024

An event embracing the spirit of Aloha - a philosophy that centres on our interconnectedness with nature and all living things in the Hawaiian universe. Including dance workshops with the London School of Hula, a screening of and Q&A about the film Tales of Tusitala by Dan Lim, an art workshop celebrating quilting with Solomon Enos, a block printing activity, and a talk by Dr Keao NeSmith about his translation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit into Hawaiian.

This event also hosted a pop-up shop featuring kapa (barkcloth) jewellery created by Pūko’a Studios.

Water World

17 May 2024

A special water-themed joint Late Night! Our Visitor Services team curated a special water trail to highlight favourite water-related objects, whilst artists and researchers and explored water issues in different societies with talks, craft activities and tours. Featuring the sounds of the rain forest, including Bayakan rain-drumming, in a specially-composed sound track using material from the sound archives, a water-themed Evenki beadwork activity, activities centred around water and women's health, a and a pop-up Tap Social bar.

The Gathering Place: Africa

4 May 2024

An evening of original music, performance, art and creative participation featuring contemporary artists from South Africa, West Africa and Oxford. Debuting newly created work based on historical sounds, images, objects and histories within the Museum's collections, including live beats, poetry, sound, visual art, and movement.

Featuring Xolile 'X' Madinda, Rawz, Lydia Idakula, Ndukwe Onuoha, Isaac Emokpae, Maka, Donna Ogunnaike, and Miles Ncube.

After Dark

23 November 2023

An evening packed with activities hosted by researchers, creatives, community groups and staff to mark Disability History Month and the new Curating for Change trail in the Museum. Featuring a curator-led tour of Nothing Without Us: Experiences of Disability, a wellbeing Zine-making workshop, BSL Hand Choir workshops, object handling, and behind-the-scenes sharing sessions with exhibition co-producers.

An event programmed with Curating for Change Fellow Kyle Jordan and a team of local co-producers.

Connected Worlds

5 May 2023

An evening exploring the Museum's behind-the-scenes projects and research that make connections between communities. Featuring researcher talks on featherwork, facepaint and music as instruments of protest in South Africa and the masks of Agaba masqueraders from the oil-rich Niger Delta, stories of Evenki cosmology and shamanic tradition from the Siberian Arctic, Curating for Change workshops featuring the stories of disabled people across time, and spoken word sets in the galleries from hip hop MC and poet Rawz.

Tonkori amongst the Spires

13 November 2022

An evening celebrating Ainu music and culture, with special musical performance by world-renowned tonkori musician OKI, a short film screening of Ainu Hunter, Mon-chan by Eiko Soga followed by Q&A, a reading corner featuring the manga Golden Kamuy by Satoru Noda, and behind-the-scenes tours with OKI and museum staff.

Featuring a specially designed self-guided tour of the Ainu objects on display at the Museum.

Wandering in Other Worlds

20 October 2022

An event exploring the museum's collaboration with contemporary artist and master of traditional Evenki song, Galina Veretnova, and Oxford-based artist and researcher Anya Gleizer. Featuring a performance responding to Siberian collections and sharing Evenki culture and curator talks about the new display on Evenki Cosmology and Shamanic Traditions.

Also including behind-the-scenes tours of the Beyond the Binary exhibition, activities curated by the Play! project, and an opportunity to view recently acquired Hawaiian quilts.

'My Normal' Museum Takeover

2 July 2022

Long-time museum partners, community group My Normal, spent a night subverting hierarchies in the Museum. Featuring live music from Personal Best, a creative workshop with our Zine-making team, workshops, tours and object handling with the Beyond the Binary team, and a final change to see the Beyond the Binary exhibition.

A Buzz in the Air...

27 May 2022

An immersive evening exploring a mythological subterranean insect world inspired by Hawaiian myths in the Pitt Rivers. Our journey began with a museum display of Evenki objects and span into a story of dance, performance and song, including a live a cappella spoken word performance by MC/poet Rawz, retro video games and some GIANT board games!

Featuring the display of 'Chashm-e-Badoor, Far Be the Evil Eye', an artist's replica of a fabled pair of 17th -century glasses said to have been made for a Mughal Prince in India, with a talk by the artist Saba Qizilbash.

Gender, Sexuality, Power

17 February 2022

A late night to mark LGBT History Month 2022 featuring pop-up activities and stalls from Oxford Pride, Sycorax Collective, Witney Pride, Bicester Pride, the community curators of the Beyond the Binary exhibition, a zine making workshop, music, lights, and refreshments.

Diversity

15 November 2019

A celebration of the national launch of LGBT History Month 2020. A pride-filled evening of tours, poetry, talks, stalls, activities and refreshments! Including stalls and talks by Oxford Pride, Pink Times, Voices and Visibility, Proud Trust, and Blackwells books, and a series of 5 minute talks by Dean Atta, Louise Wallwein, Mike Parker, Sue Sanders, Caroline Page, Schools Out & Cyril Nri.

Featuring a dazzling new Diversity themed light and sound show on the front of the Museum of Natural History by Luxmuralis.

Multaka: Museums as Meeting Point

11 July 2019

An evening of performances and activities bringing people from Oxford to meet and share experiences from their cultures. Including music, poetry, tours and talks, fun and fashion! Featuring an 'Introduction to Arabic' class with Matti and Hiba from KAMA-Oxford and a fashion show of traditional costumes.

Programmed and organised by Multaka-Oxford volunteers. Multaka-Oxford is a collaborative project funded by Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund.

Oceans and Islands

17 May 2019

An evening exploring the wonders of the oceans in the Museum of Natural History and the cultures crossing oceans and times in the Pitt Rivers Museum. Including a performances of the Javanese gamelan, shadow puppet shows, and dancing, and talks, tours and object handling from the Multaka-Oxford and Beyond the Binary teams.

'My Normal' Takeover Night

23 February 2019

There's no such thing as normal! An event specially curated by the young people from My Normal - an intersectional, creativity based project aiming to give LGBTI+ youth safe spaces and a bigger voice in Oxfordshire. Including interactive art, workshops and performances and a non-alcoholic cash bar.

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