University of Mississippi Museum and Historic Houses

CELEBRATING ART AND CULTURE NOW AND EVER

Visitors, scholars, school children and researchers regularly visit the University Museum and our Historic Houses. Some come to walk among our Greek and Roman sculpture dating back to 1500 BCE or to see our telescopes, models of large machines, and demonstration devices that have taught natural philosophy, physics, and astronomy to our students for decades. Others come to hear from leading experts who offer academic connections, artistic experience, and rare insights about our collections. Families bring their children to experience hands-on learning designed to unleash their creativity and broaden their understanding of other cultures. Many come to stroll down Bailey Woods Trail to find their way to Rowan Oak.

The University of Mississippi Museum and Historic Houses complex serves as a cultural center for the University community, the state of Mississippi, and beyond.

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Campaign Priorities

SUPERIOR LEADERSHIP

The Museum is responsible for the preservation, storage and access of artifacts for educational purposes of cultural property. In addition, staff lead the efforts to research and document the collection, design its presentation to the public and use the collection to support teaching of history, science, art, and culture.

Staff members organize exhibitions, demonstrations, lectures, community events, educational workshops, and programs for children. Now & Ever: The Campaign for Ole Miss, with your support, will endow the museum director, curator, and museum staff positions to ensure that the Museum continues to be ranked among the most highly regarded in the nation.

The Campaign, with your support, will also fund a proposed position of Historic Landscape Specialist at Rowan Oak to care for the historically renowned landscape, horticulture, and forest resources of Rowan Oak.

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COLLECTION MANAGEMENT

The University Museum has experienced a high degree of success in recent years in expanding outdoor sculpture and art in public places – on the Museum grounds, and on the Ole Miss campus. Endowments established during the Campaign will ensure our ability to grow this collection and to display it across spaces that are more public.

Similarly, an endowment for exhibitions will assist the University Museum in enhancing the understanding of our own collections, and with other works on loan, bring to light new cultures, traditions and history not represented in our current collections.

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EDUCATION AND ENGAGEMENT

With your gifts, we can serve our audiences in new and more creative and mission-fulfilling ways.

In addition to attracting visitors from around the world and celebrating Southern artistic and cultural heritage, the University Museum is classified as a “teaching museum” where University faculty and students extensively use the collection in their curricula. In recent years, multiple students from diverse University departments have benefited from career-pathway mentorships and internships in the Museum. Additional students gain valuable employment experience through graduate assistantships. The entire community benefits from the artistic experience and rare insights provided by experts in a variety of fields who are invited to speak at the Museum.

Rowan Oak faces significant challenges in establishing broadened interpretive content and augmenting visitors’ awareness of African Americans who lived and served on the site, including enslaved individuals in the antebellum era, many decades before Faulkner’s ownership. Guided by our deep sense of equitable storytelling, Campaign support is needed to fund interpretive technology such as internet-connected kiosks and other interactive tour technologies. Additional investments would enable us to open the outbuildings that are currently closed to public viewing.

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SPACE TO MATCH THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE COLLECTIONS

Throughout its history, the University of Mississippi Museum and Historic Houses have had an integral responsibility serving as a connection between Ole Miss and the Oxford community. We intend to have a welcome center at Rowan House to serve as the “front door” to the community. In addition, we will update and expand gallery space to showcase more of the Museum’s permanent collections. The Campaign will create new places for the entire community to interact with interpreters, teachers, and artists at the Museum and our historic houses.

New meeting and event facilities and additional areas for students of all ages to visit, learn, and create art will expand our outreach and educational programming. Expanded conservation and storage space will safeguard our growing collection. A reconfigured, new loading dock will receive and move art objects safely. A much needed auditorium will host renowned lecturers and connect them to a real-time, worldwide audience.

The opportunity is great, and it is urgent. Just as we must preserve and protect the artifacts and collections that have been entrusted to us, we are stewards of the University of Mississippi Museum and Historic Houses. Repairs and renovations are needed to optimize the visitor experience and better serve the community.

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