FROM:Julianne Snider, Illinois State Museum
     [log in to unmask]
TO:Museum-l and VRTPALEO (The VP Community discussion list)
 
I have been asked, by a third party without access to e-mail,
to post the following text to the lists.
 
********************************************************************
********************************************************************
 
HELP SAVE THE GREENE GEOLOGICAL MUSEUM: A NATIONAL HISTORIC LANDMARK
 
The Thomas A. Greene Memorial Museum and Geologic Collection was
designated a National Historic Landmark on November 4, 1993, by
Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, following the
recommendation of the National Park Service. This unique
landmark honors the important role that amateur naturalists
have played, and continue to play, in the scientific investigation
of our nation. It also recognizes the pioneering efforts in
women's science education by Milwaukee-Downer College. In a
precedent-setting action, this is the first time that a museum
and its collection have been designated as a National Historic
Landmark. Although the collection has remained intact for a century
following Greene's death, it now needs your help to survive.
 
The museum and collection document the geologic activities of
Thomas A. Greene, an amateur naturalist from Milwaukee, who built
this outstanding and irreplaceable collection of 13,000 minerals
and 75,000 midwestern fossils during the late 1800s. His collection
was used for scientific research by many prominent paleontologists,
including James Hall (New York State Museum), Robert Whitfield
(American Museum of Natural History), Frank Springer and August
Foerste (Smithsonian Institution), and Percy Raymond (Harvard
University). Because Greene's heirs had the foresight to donate it
to Milwaukee-Downer College and erect a museum specifically to
house it in 1913, his collection, still accompanied by his handwritten
labels and stored in his original cabinets, is the only intact late
nineteenth-century amateur geological collection in the U.S. With
the closing of Milwaukee-Downer, the collection and museum were
purchased by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
 
Despite its historical importance, this landmark is in imminent
danger of destruction. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee actively
and persistently opposed the Park Service's designation efforts.
Ignoring that landmark status was granted to both the museum and
collection as a single entity and despite opposition from the Greene
family, the university insists on moving the collection into
inadequate facilities without proper preparation. It claims the
move is for the good of the collection, raising false issues
about the security and accessibility of the collection and
structural stability  of the museum building. However, both
the Park Service and independent museum collections experts
have informed the university that moving the collection out of
the museum building for any reason will destroy its historical
importance and seriously jeopardize its safety and usefulness.
Therefore, the university is fully aware that moving the collection
will destroy the landmark designation and a unique part of our
national heritage, but insists on moving it anyway.
 
Your help is urgently needed to save the Greene museum and
collection. Don't let the poor decisions of a few unqualified and
intractable university officials cheat Wisconsin and the nation
out of this important part of its scientific heritage. If you are
a Wisconsin resident, please contact all of your state officials:
non-Wisconsin residents contact only the governor (The Honorable
Tommy Thompson, Office of the Governor, State Capitol, P.O. Box 7863,
Madison WI 53707). Tell them how important and unique this landmark
is, and remind them that the Greene collection and museum belong to
the citizens of Wisconsin and are not the private property of a
handful of university officials to do with as they please.
Specifically, urge them to: 1) immediately stop the university
from moving the Greene collection out of the Greene museum building,
which will destroy this landmark, and insist that any items
already moved be returned; 2) establish an oversight board,
consisting of experts in museum collections management and curation,
in the history of science, and in the Greene collection itself, to
develop long-term plans for operation, preservation and use of both
the Greene museum and collection as a national historic landmark;
and 3) allow an outside support group to raise funds for the museum,
assist in its operation and participate in long-term planning.
Act NOW before the university can carry out its goal to destroy
this unique national landmark---every letter counts!
 
March 1994
 
Friends of the Greene Museum
451 Beverly Place
Lake Forest IL 60045
(708) 295-3844