Greetings, all and welcome from your University Museum and Rowan Oak! This month’s Director’s Letter will be concise but very heartfelt as I share news with you of considerable personal meaningfulness – my retirement from the University.
This mid-summer (June 30) I will step down after nearly 13 years of University employment and my directorship of our museum and its historic houses. It was September, 2012 that I arrived to Oxford from my museum work in Honolulu, and the subsequent years here have been the honor and privilege of a lifetime. Among the myriad difficulties of doing justice to a communication of this nature is the sheer impossibility of expressing gratitude to the hundreds and hundreds of individuals who have supported me and our museum properties with graciousness, generosity, and boundless thoughtfulness over the course of my tenure.
Even by using categories, the list of friends, colleagues, associates, and citizens to thank is huge. To the museum professional staff past and present, it has been such an immense joy to be your colleague, and to the current staff team it is with complete confidence and deep admiration that the baton is passed to you to carry things forward. I believe and I have said this often, that the current museum team is notable for so many reasons but primarily for the extraordinary range of talents, skills, and dedication that you exhibit every day.
To University leaders over this decade-plus, you have supported us so faithfully and fully and have created an ecosystem for the arts at the University that is exceptional. To Chancellor Boyce and Provost Wilkin, you have made us stronger, more impactful in our service to the community, and more fully empowered to serve the University’s missions of teaching, research, and service.
To the Board members of the Friends of the Museum, also past and present, it is simply not possible to calibrate the meaningfulness of your tireless volunteer service to our museums by your dedication to your roles as advocates and ambassadors on our behalf. The University Museum and Rowan Oak are remarkably better places with such a wider spectrum of impactful programming and educational outcomes because of your service. And what can we say about Harvest Supper except perhaps, brilliant! Astoundingly
enjoyable evenings of celebration and support-raising under the stars at Faulkner’s Rowan Oak. Sublime, deeply moving…and so much fun!
To my colleagues at University Development and the University of Mississippi Foundation, you have facilitated not only $4.6 million of Museum and Rowan Oak support raised in the current university Now & Ever Capital Campaign, but you have notably served our donors while also expanding the universe of prospects for future support. Each of you has literally made our jobs easier by your extraordinary professionalism, friendship, and collaborative spirit.
University colleagues of every category – – faculty, staff, leaders all – – virtually every meaningful thing we may have done is due to your partnership, warmth of spirit, and collegiality. To the students of this great research university: you are the whole reason why we are here!! To any of you possibly reading this column, I have four words that I ask you to always recall: we are your museum!
*****
And finally, museum members and stakeholders: here in closing I am at such an insufficiency of words to thank you for everything you have enabled, attended, supported, and participated within. Both the Museum and Rowan Oak are on such great trajectories forward, and with so much momentum – – please (as I entirely know you will) support my successor and robustly sustain your involvement.
I plan to remain residentially right here in Oxford so I’m certain I will see all of you at future Museum, Rowan Oak, and University events….but even if it’s Kroger or the Square or the gym, please say hello – your friendship will forever mean the world to me.
Robert Saarnio, Director
Robert Saarnio
Museum Director