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.