Hello everyone, from the University Museum and William Faulkner’s Rowan Oak. Warmest of mid-winter greetings to you all, with gratitude for your support, your sustained memberships, and the walk-in visits that are starting to rise in number. Recall that we are fully open since the holiday break, Tuesday to Saturday 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. — and additionally at Rowan Oak on Sundays 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
I’d like to use this month’s letter to share with you a celebration of sorts, an enumeration of all of the local and regional partnerships that we have developed over the years, and which we are so very proud to continue annually. As a newly-launched national museum initiative expresses it, we are of, by, and for all — outward facing and service-to-community focused in all that we do. The organizations I’ll describe here have in most cases consisted of program, event, and community service partners of the University Museum for a considerable period. A separate and subsequent communication will review our campus-based University partners, as I turn a spotlight here on the city, county, and regional collaborations.
Prominently among our partnership cohort is the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council, based as you know in the City’s former Powerhouse building. Under the dynamic leadership of its Director Wayne Andrews and his team, the spectrum of Museum / Arts Council shared initiatives is wide-ranging and includes events as diverse as the annual Fiber Art Festival and the monthly Art Crawls. Equally significant are our linkages to Visit Oxford, the city’s tourism bureau which very regularly sends visitors our way and which often hosts travel writers and journalists in tours through both the Museum and Rowan Oak. We’ve been honored to have been a Presenting Sponsor of the Visit Oxford Double Decker Arts Festival on four occasions, including this year’s upcoming April 23–24 event.
We have of course many close relationships with peer museums and historic sites and we’re in regular dialog and partnership-exploration with institutions as geographically dispersed as the Mississippi Museum of Art, the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, the Walter Anderson Museum, the Memphis Brooks Museum, the Dixon Gallery & Gardens, and the Metal Museum. We have additional levels of connectivity and involvement with national museums as well, being an Institutional Member of the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) and the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG), along with Rowan Oak’s status as an original, charter Affiliated Site of the Chicago-based American Writers’ Museum. I’m honored to serve on the national Board of AAMG, the college and university museums’ consortium, and fortunate to participate monthly with both the Southeast Art Museum Directors, and our regional museum association based in Atlanta, the Southeast Museums Conference.
Our acclaimed Education department has sustained many long-term and highly meaningful program partnerships, the sheer length of that list constituting all the evidence you may ever need of our decades-long commitment to youth and families of every demographic: Leap Frog After School Program, Scott Center, Baptist Children’s Health Fair, LOU Reads, Lafayette County Literacy Council, Lafayette County Public Library (First Regional Libraries), Oxford Moms & Tots, Boys & Girls Club of North Mississippi. We have also provided children’s hand-on activities for the Oxford Park Commission and the Oxford Community Market (OXCM), and our Traveling Trunks program has visited countless local and regional schools since its origins in the 1970s.
The Thacker Mountain Radio show has been a long-term partner — we are actively committed to the TMR annual membership party Silent Auction, and on two occasions performances of the show have been broadcast from the grounds of Rowan Oak. Requests for the Director or senior staff to speak publicly include invitations from Rotary Oxford, St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, the City of Oxford Historic Properties Commission, and the Cedar Oaks Guild among others. Mission-aligned organizations and groups in Holly Springs, Water Valley, and New Albany are also among our valued collaborators, as is the Jackson based historic preservation-focused Mississippi Heritage Trust.
I’m inspired in reflecting upon these multiple modes of outreach and community alliance that the University Museum has developed, and I want to commend the commitment and dedicated hard work of the Museum’s professional staff to making them the strong and meaningful community service initiatives that they are.
As always, please never hesitate to reach out to me or any of the staff, or to stop by and say hello — we are here to make your visits and your participation with us the best that they can be.
Sincere regards,
Robert Saarnio
Museum Director