Archives for April 2014

New Grants for Museum Community Outreach

During the Fall, the Museum’s Education Department was awarded two grants: an award of $899 from the Mississippi Humanities Council for Faulkner’s Rowan Oak Traveling Trunk and a grant of $3,993 from the Lafayette Oxford Foundation for Tomorrow (LOFT) to create an interactive educational area within the Museum’s classroom spaces to facilitate discovery and exploration for young visitors to the Museum.

Faulkner’s Rowan Oak Traveling Trunk is our first non-art trunk, as it concentrates on the literature of Faulkner and promoting Rowan Oak. It includes classroom sets (35) of two Faulkner short stories (Barn Burning and A Rose for Emily), and is the first trunk designed for high schoolers. The highlight of the trunk is a 1918 typewriter that is similar to one that Faulkner used.  This program is financially assisted by the National Endowment for the Humanities through the Mississippi Humanities Council.

The LOFT foundation is a widely respected community organization under the CREATE Foundation umbrella with a deep commitment to supporting local efforts to improve the quality of life and opportunity in Oxford and Lafayette County. While the Museum serves children and families through regular programming, we wanted to expand the opportunities for families visiting the Museum independently and make the Museum a highly accessible place for independent learning. This proposal was generously co-sponsored with a $500 donation from the Friends of the Museum to support the production of Family Learning Guides for young learners visiting the Museum. We look forward to undertaking this project and creating new ways for families to experience the Museum.

University Museum Ranked Among 20 Best College Art Museums

news17Complex Art & Design website praises breadth of museum’s collections, community ties

Citing how the museum balances “their dedication to the local community with a commitment to expanding students’ world views,” the Complex Art & Design website has put the University of Mississippi Museum at No. 17 on its list of the 20 Best College Art Museums.

The ranking puts the University Museum ahead of the Yale University Art Gallery and in the company of campus museums at Harvard, Howard and Princeton universities.

“Inclusion in national recognition of this nature provides a wide range of benefits to museums, from morale-building and wider funding opportunities, to enhanced exhibition and program partnership opportunities with peer institutions,” said Robert Saarnio, University Museum director. “This honor comes at a time when we are dynamically expanding our exhibitions, programs, and educational impacts. On behalf of the entire museum staff, and all of the museum’s many supporters and friends, I express our gratitude and our sincere pleasure at this news.”