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October 2002
The Dedication Ceremony
for The Spurlock Museum began at 1:00 PM on September 26th, 2002.
Participants crowded the main entrance
area on the west side of the museum on a beautiful fall day with
lots of sunshine and temperatures in the mid 70s. Brief remarks
were made by President James Stukel, Chancellor Nancy Cantor,
University
Trustee Marjorie Sodemann, University Foundation President Sidney
Micek, Dean Jesse Delia, and a special message by Mr. Melvin
Grey
Owl. As the ribbon cutting was about to take place, the staff hurried
inside to take up their positions as hosts; the ribbon was cut,
and doors were opened for the first time to dedication guests
and
soon many others. The galleries were quickly crowded with visitors
and the staff was soon presenting the Museum to its first enthusiastic
visitors. It was a splendid time, enjoyed by all. At 9 AM Friday
morning, the Museum’s first tour group, second graders from
Unity East School in Sidney, arrived. Mr. Nick Dalrymple, their
teacher, made his reservation three years in advance. Some excited
youngsters had to be dragged away from exhibit cases as the tour
continued.
Construction of a wholly new museum is a enormous task, and it
was made possible only by our highly dedicated staff and five years
of planning and hard work. I am very proud of them all.
Anyone who has built a home knows the unending small (and some
not so small!) problems that arise during construction, ranging
from storms early on during construction that delayed workmen to
final little problems in outfitting the exhibits themselves.
For a new museum, everything must be planned. More than a dozen
curators from the faculty and off campus institutions prepared the
basic designs of each gallery and worked with Museum personnel on
selection of artifacts. These individuals also will help us plan
exhibit rotation in the future. Principle curators include Norm
and Sibby Whitten (Americas Gallery), James Dengate and Paul Marty
(Ancient Mediterranean), Kai-Wing Chow, Janet Keller, and Clark
Cunningham (East Asia and the Pacific), Lamissa Bangali, Wayne Pitard,
and Douglas Brewer (Africa the Middle East), and Ken MacLennan (Modern
Europe).
Our exhibit cases were
not simply bought off a showroom floor, but instead they are
designed and constructed for the Spurlock Museum,
and they are not simple boxes but they must be airtight, with desiccants
to maintain humidity and special lights that won’t fade
the artifacts. These were manufactured for us in Georgia, and
shipped
north during the winter and spring of 2002, but it took two trips
to the Georgia shop to visit and evaluate progress. Fifty platform
exhibits and 103 exhibit cases were planned, arranged, and installed;
all had to be evaluated relative to their surrounding cases and
artifacts and the themes of each gallery.
About 1679 artifacts
were selected from the Museum collection of over 45,000. In the
years ahead, many of these will be put on display
during planned exhibit rotation. Artifacts had to be selected for
each case, and the case layout designed on a computer. Artifacts
are not simply placed on the floor of the exhibit case, but instead
they are arranged as to show the most important views of the
artifacts
and to maintain an overall pleasing arrangement. Many of the artifacts
are placed on boxes, and these had to be scaled, fabricated,
and
covered by fabric. Many artifacts are on stands; these were manufactured
in the Museum, each fitted to the item it holds. In the Egyptian
gallery, brass-ring stands for semi-circular amphora are not
simply
factory products, rather each was individually crafted and contoured
to the irregularities of curvature of its intended artifact.
Christa
Deacy-Quinn, Josh Gorman, and Rita Ziemlo and others of Christa’s
staff in Museum Exhibits did a splendid job in this work.
Education and Outreach
planned the graphics to accompany the artifacts. Illustrations
had to be selected, approval for use obtained from
publishers and other holders of copyrights, and edited to fit available
space. Text to accompany the graphic materials was written by
the
Curators and edited to fit space available by Tandy Lacy, Kim Sheehan,
and others. Small stands for text materials were designed and
built,
and exhibit text placards mounted on these “reader rails.”
More traditional museum tasks continue in the Registration Division
under the supervision of Jennifer White. Over the past three years,
new cataloguing systems have been developed, which called for revision
of records of all the more than 45,000 items in the artifact collection
and both the photoarchive and teaching collections as well. All
new acquisitions must be evaluated by the Museum staff before inclusion
in the collections; more than 100 new collections have been added
in this time period. Artifacts are available at the Museum website
for both researchers and simple enjoyment by all site visitors.
Jennifer and her staff also joined the other Museum work groups
in many exhibit fabrication tasks. And through it all, Dee Robbins,
Assistant to the Director, held it all together.
Yet in spite of all
this work we have been looking toward the future. Kim and Tandy,
in the Education and Outreach Division, already have
33 school tours scheduled for the fall 2002 semester, and new reservations
are made all of the time. The Museum reaches out to the surrounding
communities as well. Eight outreach programs are scheduled, reaching
classrooms in Atwood, Ludlow, and Paxton, as well as others in
more
local schools. The temporary, focus gallery opened with the Horowitz
European tomb rubbing collection, and that will be replaced by “Trading
in the Bronze Age” for Spring, 2003 and “200 Years of
Illinois Agriculture” in the summer. We hope our temporary
Natural History exhibit will stimulate interest in supporting our
planned Natural History Pavilion, which will build on the many
artifacts
and research collections brought together during more than a century
of Museum of Natural History activities.
We are very proud of our new Museum and very grateful to the University,
Dean, and all the very generous donors that made the Spurlock Museum
a reality. The Museum staff welcomes all of you to visit and enjoy
the culmination of five very busy years.
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