Greetings everyone, and thank you so much for all of your support, participation, and attendance at the Museum and Rowan Oak! As we saw so marvelously on Friday, July 12 when we held the Exhibition Reception for the Lewisohn Collection of Caribbean Art show, our event numbers have not only returned to pre-pandemic levels but are beginning to exceed them. The Museum was packed with reception attendees who watched Ricky Burkhead play steel drums and present a talk about the forms and types of music across the Caribbean islands, joined by his great long-term friend, saxophonist Alphonso Sanders.
With food and beverages catered by Boswell’s to match the Caribbean theme, we saw attendees of every age and demographic – – and perhaps most excitingly of all, many who described themselves as first-time Museum event attendees. Please continue to follow this newsletter 5th & University which is e-list distributed in the first week of very month for all the latest about Museum events, programs, and opportunities to participate.
*****
I want to take the opportunity to describe some of the professional affiliations that our Museum and our Faulkner literary heritage site participate within and are members of, for the purpose of conveying a behind the scenes view of how our 85-year old museum is mainstreamed regionally and nationally in the networks of our field.
Within our state we are active in the meetings and initiatives of the Mississippi Hills National Heritage Area, a federal program which celebrates, promotes, and interprets heritage and cultural sites across 32 counties of North Mississippi. We sustain an active membership in the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, whose mission is described as follows: “Each year the MIAL honors creative individuals with an award in their specific field, presented in nine categories: Fiction, Non-fiction, Life Writing, Youth Literature, Visual Art, Music Composition (Classical), Music Composition (Contemporary), Photography, and Poetry.”
Regionally the Southeastern Museums Conference is our region-wide professional museums association headquartered in Atlanta and representing the interests of all 12 southeast states from Louisiana to Virginia. Additionally I have the privilege of participating annually in the two-day convening of the Southeast Art Museum Directors which rotates its once-yearly gatherings in host cities and commonly in the larger art museums of the region. SEAMD is unique in not being a formal, staffed organization but an annual conversation among like-minded professionals sharing resources, solutions, and innovations across the field – – and widely celebrated for its depth of collegiality and collaborative outcomes. The traveling in 2017 of our William Eggleston exhibition The Beautiful Mysterious to Orlando, Florida was a direct result of our having marketed it at an SEAMD meeting the year prior in Jackson, Mississippi.
At the national level we are members of three museum-field associations, the American Association for State & Local History (AASLH), the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) and the Association of Academic Museums & Galleries (AAMG). Each has a different purpose, focus, and mission, and our active participation as an Institutional Member in each provides the professional staff and I with access to an exceptionally wide range of peer networks, professional resources, and learning opportunities to sustain our professional development and continuing growth. We are very fortunate to work within a University of Mississippi ecosystem of Office of the Provost support that provides us the funds for the Staff to each have access as individual memberships also to the deep resources of AASLH, AAM, and AAMG.
A closing note that in aggregate across the state, region, and nation our membership participation places us squarely at the center of the collegial spirit and collaboration for which the museum field is so widely celebrated. But also our having access to all of the established best Practices and Professional Standards of our field. Museums and historic house museums as a sub-type must adhere to these best practices and standards to operate at highest efficiency and to sustain maximum impacts and program outcomes for our communities.
I’m proud to mention how determinedly and comprehensively our Museum and Rowan Oak are acting daily within the guiding principles of our field. Our visibility across the field is high, as is our national reputation – – derived from a wide recognition of our professionalism, productivity, creative programming, and service to community.
Many thanks everyone, see you next month in these pages and at our two museum sites daily!
Robert Saarnio
Museum Director