Northwest Arkansas Times :: Northwest Arkansas News
This is OUTRAGEOUS, and without shame. And personal to me. I have spent many hours in that museum, and researched one of the biggest stories I ever worked on (well, our superconductor gig was the biggest, when I worked in Arkansas), the sesquicentennial. Not a big exciting story, but it ran in virtually every newspaper in the state of Arkansas, clips that I am proud of to this day because people responded to it, cared about it. Researched and shot that whole story with assistance from the helpful curators at the University Museum.
I also covered its opening in the new building, a terrific home for the collection. Now, talk of moving it? Good god. I gotta agree with the article below (from my other former employer), it is a violation of the public trust, a violation of the trust by the people who donated valuable treasures to that museum. A travesty.
Gentry told board members he believes the university’s decision is a violation of public trust, noting that when donors give the museum specimens, the museum is expected to care for them professionally.
Several organizations that donated artifacts and collections to the museum are already demanding their return, museum officials said. "This is a loss of the tremendous collection of antiquities and artifacts and things that are now suddenly being denied from the general public," said eight-year advisory board member Roy Rom. "The museum is becoming extinct."
You know what the bigger pity is? Arkansas is a state that is often the butt of jokes about Arkies and their lack of intellect, their parentage, their treatment of African Americans. Pride is hard to come by in Arkansas. Hell, I've lived in South Carolina, where people have too much pride, and have done little to earn it, where authoritarianism and social stratification is far worse than in Arkansas.
I fell in love with Arkansas when I lived there, and moved to South Carolina in hopes of finding some of what had charmed me. What I found out was that Arkansas had charmed me, and always will.
The university museum is something the people of Arkansas can take real pride in, as a piece of state history, as an educational force, even as a tourist attraction.
The oddest part is that Fulbright College would be the one to let the axe fall. Would its namesake roll over in his venerable grave? Wouldn't you expect people in the Arts and Sciences to know to protect this museum, OF ALL PEOPLE? I am embarrassed to say this was my college too, in my time in graduate school there.
Shame, shame, shame.
Chris
Advisory panel OKs fighting UA museum closing
See MUSEUM, page A7
BY JENN LONG Northwest Arkansas Times
Posted on Tuesday, June 24, 2003
The University of Arkansas Museum will not be closed without staunch opposition from its care takers, the museum director told his advisory board Monday afternoon.
Director Johnnie Gentry met with the UA Museum advisory board to layout the beginnings of a plan to fight a recent university decision to close the 130-year-old institution. "The fight has been engaged and we are not going to back off," he told board members. "We are going to do everything we can to save this place."
University officials announced their decision last week to close the museum in October and lay off eight staff members in December. Donald Bobbitt, the recentlyappointed dean of the Fulbright College of Arts Sciences, made the decision to close the museum after the university administration mandated a 2 percent cut to all college budgets.
By cutting the museum, Fulbright College will save roughly $340,000 — more than half of the 2 percent requirement.
The layoffs include four employees from the collection facility and four others who work in the museum’s main building. The museum’s six graduate positions will also be eliminated.
Recent Comments