Museum of Anthropology marks last day at MU campus home

The museum's history stretches back to 1885, when it was in Academic Hall. It was there until the historic 1892 fire. The museum was located in Switzler Hall until 1967, when it moved to Swallow Hall.

The Anthropology Museum is being moved so crews can renovate the 121-year-old Swallow Hall to make it more useful for students and faculty, MU spokesman Christian Basi said.

The MU Museum of Art and Archaeology was moved out of Pickard Hall, its campus home, because the building is contaminated with radiation from experiments done in the early 20th century.

The university is "currently in very early stages of testing" for radiation at Pickard, Basi said.

The archaeology museum's cast collection of Greco-Roman art and its gift shop are open at Mizzou North, museum Director Alex Barker said. Construction on the rest of the museum's collection space is slated to begin this summer and be complete in the fall, he said.

Construction is underway for the Anthropology Museum space at Mizzou North, Anthropology Museum Associate Curator Candace Sall said, but no opening date has been set.

Both museums are expected to be at Mizzou North for the "foreseeable future," Basi said.

Though it closed its doors yesterday, the Museum of Anthropology has until June 30 to move its exhibited artifacts into storage at Mizzou North, Sall said.

Next year, the rest of the museum's artifacts will be moved into storage there, she said, as well as the items stored at the American Archaeology Division's Museum Support Center on Rock Quarry Road.

The Anthropology Museum's exhibited display is half prehistoric Missouri artifacts — including tools, weapons, clothing and pipes — and half American Indian artifacts from all over the Americas, with a re-created cabin in the middle from the pioneer days.

Both the artifacts in the cabin and on the American Indian side are from 1800 to the present.

The oldest artifact from prehistory is an 11,200 year-old spearhead.

At Mizzou North, Sall said, there will be slightly less space but more of the museum's collection will be on display because of the layout, giving the museum the opportunity to show off part of the Grayson Archery Collection, which Sall said is the largest archery collection in the world.

Sall said she "really enjoyed being here on the quad. It's been fabulous, but we're excited about the new exhibit space on Mizzou North and the fresh exhibits."

Art and Archaeology's non-exhibited collection is in permanent storage at Mizzou North, Barker said, and its planned exhibited collection is in temporary storage there. He said the move is bittersweet.

"Museums are wonderful spaces for memories," he said, "and you build up a lot of memories in whatever space you're in, so it's always difficult leaving."