Sincere greetings everyone, as I extend all best wishes for a wonderful start to summer for each of you! While the University campus has transitioned fully into the new season with Commencement now three weeks in the rear-view mirror, in almost all respects the Museum and Rowan Oak move annually in a steady state forward — being twelve-month full-time operations with no summer breaks.
We sustain our exhibitions, programming, and open-to-the-public hours as fully in the summer months as during the height of the academic year, so please share the word with your visiting friends and family that the Museum and our Faulkner historic site are fully available throughout each summer month. Possibly the single greatest harbinger of what we anticipate to be a high-visitation summer at both sites is the fact that April had such exceptionally high visitor and participant numbers here at the Museum, with over 1,100 people either touring the galleries, attending a public program, or participating in one of four high-attendance Facility Rental events that occurred that month. If we needed a barometer as a metric of the public returning to its museums and cultural heritage sites, the month of April served as such for us. If you were among the April attendees, thank you so very much for the great morale boost that your participation provided to the professional staff and I!
Another source of lifted spirits is the fact that we have successfully passed through the waves of staffing and labor force challenge that the U.S. museum field faced on a parallel track with the rest of the national economy — workers relocating, shifting employers, dropping out of the labor pool, and in many cases proving elusive to recruit and retain. Our staff team is now entirely filled in every position, with seven full-time staff at the Museum daily, and two full-time positions at Rowan Oak. As you have heard me describe in prior newsletters, these nine full-time University of Mississippi staff positions are augmented daily by Graduate Assistants, grad student employees, and undergrad workers, interns, and volunteers.
Our field is not alone in being made possible by our people, and as I enter the Museum each morning I reflect on the incontrovertible fact that the current professional staff of both the Museum and Rowan Oak are without doubt the most talented, diversely skilled, and professionally accomplished in our entire history. Any of you who manage and supervise people in your professional, volunteer, or board-service lives will know immediately what I refer to when I observe the sheer depth of meaningfulness in having a team so dedicated in their professionalism. With the right people in place, an organization’s mission, vision, and values shine forth while its impacts multiply, and its community of stakeholders and audiences are the great beneficiaries.
We greatly hope to see you at our sites or on our Bailey Woods Trail this summer, and when you visit take a moment to greet a staff member and introduce yourself if you are meeting for the first time. Small and mid-sized museums have such a distinct advantage in the myriad possibilities for personal connection with visitors. Tell us what has intrigued you or compelled your visit, ask any question you may have, and by all means share any ideas on your mind for what might make the University of Mississippi Museum and William Faulkner’s Rowan Oak even better and more valuable for you and your family.
We pride ourselves on being in an open, daily dialog with our visitors, and no observation you share will be other than entirely welcome and taken very much to heart. As you know, please feel free also to call me at 662-915-7202 or contact me at rsaarnio@olemiss.edu. Hearing your thoughts helps me help the team to meet your needs — and on our best days, to inspire and to enrich your lives.
As my Swedish ancestors would express it, ‘glad sommar’……happy summer, everyone!
Robert Saarnio
Museum Director