Dear Julie,

Although we're not lucky enough to be in the process of building a new
facility, the administration of the collections of Sweet Briar College might be
of use to you during your organizational planning.

We have a museum that displays the historical collections of the college,
including costume and household furnishings belonging to the founding family,
as well as college memorabilia.  For reasons too convoluted to mention, the
museum has been under the Alumnae Office.  However, I've just been named
Interim Director, and I will report to the Dean, which reflects more accurately
the museum's status as an academic resource.  The Director of the Pannell Art
Gallery, which collects and displays the work of 20th-century women artists,
has always reported to the Dean.  Our long-range (2 year) plan is to merge the
museum and art gallery into a body known as the Sweet Briar Museums.  This
entity would also encompass department-specific collections, such as
antiquities from the classics department and artifacts from archaeology; these
collections would be physically as well as administratively transferred to the
museum, which will enhance their use and interpretation and safeguard them for
the future.

And onto the library, which also has archival collections but no archivist, and
a staff that is aware of their importance but lacks the time or expertise to
manage them properly, monitoring use, etc.  (I once found a popsicle stick in a
file to mark someone's place!)  We hope to get a grant to have the archives
processed by a professional archivist, and then transfer them to the museum.
I'm not an archivist either, but at least there would be someone with a
curatorial background to supervise their use and monitor their condition.  The
wonderful thing about having a college museum is the way that it naturally
functions as another dimension of teaching; professors often assign papers that
must focus or incorporate some aspect of the collections, and my experience has
been that the Dean's office is therefore a natural "home" for it.

I hope this is of some use; please do not hesitate to contact me off-list if
you have further questions.


Christian Carr
duPont Scholar-in-Residence
Department of Arts Management
Sweet Briar College
434.381.6526-phone
434.381.6173-fax

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