Off with the heads: Pitt Rivers Museum removes human remains from display

Oxford institution worked with indigenous communities to overhaul insensitive displays

For almost 80 years, the shrunken human heads at Oxford University's Pitt Rivers Museum have fascinated and appalled visitors with their sewn-up lips and eye sockets, and straggly long hair decorated with iridescent beetles.

But under a major revamp to address the museum's problematic colonial past, the heads, which inspired a scene in the film Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, have been removed from display, along with 113 other human remains, including decorated skulls, scalps and Egyptian mummies.