Friends,

Warmest of Spring greetings from the University Museum and Rowan Oak, where signs of the emerging season are all around us. Some are challenging, like the cedar tree taken down by strong storm winds which blocked the entrance path to the Bailey Woods Trail for a half day this week. And some are certainly very positive, not least of which is the now comprehensive availability of the Covid vaccines to the Oxford and University communities.

We are studying all elements of the public health environment of our city, state and region and we’re working closely with the pandemic-period University Task Force on Protocols and Parameters to further prepare for maximizing health and safety for all within the Museum and Rowan Oak interiors. Should you wish to follow the same University pandemic response news that the Staff and I monitor daily, please access the University’s Covid website here: https://coronavirus.olemiss.edu/.

As we have reported previously in these pages of our monthly e-newsletter, the Museum has been a very busy place. We host many University classes, faculty, and students by appointment, while also responding to research inquiries that come to us regularly from scholars far and wide, national and international. We are also on the cusp of being able to announce further news of $50,000 in contributed private donor fund support, a gift directed in 50% allocation share to the Museum and Rowan Oak.

The Museum is deploying this generous gift to undertake very substantial public art and exterior landscape / visitor amenity improvements along the University Avenue-facing side of the 1939 and 1977 buildings. New outdoor sculptures are beginning to be installed — can’t be missed as you drive by! – – and also planned is a curvilinear concrete pathway which will lead from the ‘77 building down toward the Mary Buie Museum building, and which will include new outdoor lighting illuminating the growing inventory of public art pieces, and benches to facilitate a restful, contemplative experience of the beautiful but infrequently appreciated-in-person north side of our Museum building complex.

Rowan Oak’s share of the donor support will be used to undertake a consultant-led Master Plan study of the entire Visitor Arrival Experience to Rowan Oak. All aspects of arriving to Rowan Oak will be assessed, including house-tour ticketing, parking, orientation, signage, and the variable needs of those arriving by vehicle and those walking in by foot from the streetscape or the Bailey Woods Trail. While it is always of course a joy to be at Rowan Oak, it has long been abundantly clear that especially for first-time visitors the experience can be confusing and disorienting. We greatly look forward to the more coherent master-planned improvements to the entire arrival experience that the study, and our generous donor’s support, are enabling.

Having mentioned the Bailey Woods’ Trail above, let me close with an observation about that unique Oxford experience and University-owned wooded parkland, appreciated and actively used by thousands annually, and never more so than in the past year of needfulness for outdoor fresh-air recreation and hiking. At the website of the organization American Trails – -https://www.americantrails.org/resources/baileys-woods-national-recreation-trail-oxford-mississippi/ – – one learns the story of the Trail’s origins in the William Faulkner land-ownership era and his regular use of this pathway on his walks into town. Up to and including the successful 2012 nomination by the University to the National Recreation Trails program, a Federal designation.

At circa 3/5 of a mile in length and with an extraordinary abundance of flora and fauna plus two bridges over scenic streams, many of you are aware that the Trail directly connects the Museum to Rowan Oak by a sublime and serene 25 minute walking experience. I highly encourage you to experience the Trail, and also check out the fascinating American Trails website Iink above, so few in Oxford are aware of the whole compelling story of this great landscape in the heart of our city and campus.

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Please always know how greatly the entire Museum professional staff and I have appreciated the regular communications, warm-spirited greetings, and Membership renewals we have received over these past months from so many of you. As I observe often, our friends and supporters not only sustain us, they inspire us. Thank you always, and greatly!

Sincere regards,

 

Robert Saarnio 
Museum Director