The William R. and Clarice V. Spurlock Museum, better known as the Spurlock Museum, is an ethnographic

museum A museum is an institution dedicated to displaying or Preservation (library and archive), preserving culturally or scientifically significant objects. Many museums have exhibitions of these objects on public display, and some have private colle ...

at the

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United States. Established in 1867, it is the f ...

. The Spurlock Museum's permanent collection includes portions of collections from other museums and units on the Urbana-Champaign campus such as cultural artifacts from the Museum of Natural History and Department of Anthropology as well as historic clothing from the Bevier Collection of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences. The museum also holds objects donated by other institutions and private individuals. With approximately 51,000 objects in its artifact collection, the Spurlock Museum at the

collects, preserves, documents, exhibits, and studies objects of cultural heritage. The museum's main galleries, highlighting the ancient

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern ...

, modern

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

ancient Egypt Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower E ...

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary of ...

East Asia East Asia is a geocultural region of Asia. It includes China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan, plus two special administrative regions of China, Hong Kong and Macau. The economies of Economy of China, China, Economy of Ja ...

Oceania Oceania ( , ) is a region, geographical region including Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Outside of the English-speaking world, Oceania is generally considered a continent, while Mainland Australia is regarded as its co ...

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

, and the

Americas The Americas, sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North America and South America.''Webster's New World College Dictionary'', 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio. When viewed as a sing ...

, celebrate the diversity of cultures through time and across the globe.

History

The foundations of the modern Spurlock Museum can be traced back to 1911, when the university established the Museum of Classical

Archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

and Art and the Museum of European Culture. These were joined in 1917 by the Oriental Museum, which merged with Classical Archaeology and Art in 1929. In 1954 the Museum of European Culture joined with the merged Classical and Oriental Museum to form a single museum, which was renamed the World Heritage Museum in 1971. From its beginnings in 1911, the museum in its various forms had operated out of a space on the fourth floor of Lincoln Hall. In 1995 a donation by William and Clarice Spurlock made it possible for a new building to be constructed to house the museum and its growing collections. In June 2000, the World Heritage Museum was renamed the William R. and Clarice V. Spurlock Museum, and on September 26, 2002, the museum opened to the public. The size and age of the museum's collections made moving them from Lincoln Hall to the new Spurlock building a formidable task. The first complete inventory of the museum's holdings since 1972 was conducted before any of the objects were packed. More than 150 fields of information were recorded on each item. To pack the more than 30,000 items took thirty-five undergraduate students two years. The packing job took approximately of bagged Styrofoam peanuts, 1,822 boxes, and 148 crates. Many of the boxes and crates for the most fragile artifacts were custom-made. The actual move between buildings took ten days.

Collection

The Spurlock Museum's artifact collection contains approximately 51,000 objects, covering six continents and one million years of human cultural history. A few of the significant collections include

Parthenon The Parthenon (; ; ) is a former Ancient Greek temple, temple on the Acropolis of Athens, Athenian Acropolis, Greece, that was dedicated to the Greek gods, goddess Athena. Its decorative sculptures are considered some of the high points of c ...

frieze casts,

Merovingian The Merovingian dynasty () was the ruling family of the Franks from around the middle of the 5th century until Pepin the Short in 751. They first appear as "Kings of the Franks" in the Roman army of northern Gaul. By 509 they had united all the ...

bronzes,

Mesopotamian Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary o ...

cuneiform tablets, and Amazonian bark cloth. Artifact preservation and public education are the main tasks of Spurlock Museum. Preservation is achieved by keeping the majority of artifacts in storage; following professional standards, the museum only displays four to five percent of its holdings at any one time. Stored artifacts may be made available for scholarly study or loans to other institutions, as well as serve as a core for temporary exhibitions. They may also be used through the information and images provided on the internet. Not all of the artifacts described here are on display in the museum.

The Fred A. Freund Collection of Chinese and Japanese Wood Carvings

A collection of over 200 Japanese and Chinese wood carvings and associated materials have been received as a gift of Mr. Fred A. Freund. Donated since 1999, the artifacts date from the

Edo Edo (), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo. Edo, formerly a (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the '' de facto'' capital of Japan from 1603 as the seat of the Tokugawa shogu ...

and

Meiji period The was an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonizatio ...

s in

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

and from the

Qing The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...

dynasty in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. The subject material depicted includes an assortment of human, animal, utilitarian and abstract images.

The Crocker Land Expedition-Collection from the Arctic

The

Crocker Land Expedition The Crocker Land Expedition took place in 1913. Its purpose was to investigate the existence of Crocker Land, a huge island supposedly sighted by the explorer Robert Peary from the top of Cape Colgate in 1906. It is now believed that Peary fraud ...

Collection consists of over 200 artifacts and hundreds of photos collected between 1913 and 1917 by an

Arctic The Arctic (; . ) is the polar regions of Earth, polar region of Earth that surrounds the North Pole, lying within the Arctic Circle. The Arctic region, from the IERS Reference Meridian travelling east, consists of parts of northern Norway ( ...

exploration team led by ethnologist Donald B. MacMillan. The photographs highlight the

Inuit Inuit (singular: Inuk) are a group of culturally and historically similar Indigenous peoples traditionally inhabiting the Arctic and Subarctic regions of North America and Russia, including Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwe ...

, landscapes, and wildlife while the ethnographic or cultural artifacts include hunting and whaling tools, clothing and sled equipment.

The Edgar J. Banks Collection of Sumerian and Babylonian Clay Tablets

This collection of approximately 1750 inscribed tablets from ancient sites of Umman and

Drehem Puzrish-Dagan (modern Drehem) (Tall ad-Duraihim) is an important archaeological site in Al-Qādisiyyah Governorate (Iraq). It is best-known for the thousands of Clay tablet, clay tablets that are known to have come from the site through Archaeolo ...

dates from the Third Dynasty of Ur in the 21st and 20th centuries BCE to the

Neo-Babylonian The Neo-Babylonian Empire or Second Babylonian Empire, historically known as the Chaldean Empire, was the last polity ruled by monarchs native to ancient Mesopotamia. Beginning with the coronation of Nabopolassar as the King of Babylon in 626 BC ...

and early

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

periods (ca. 625-520 BCE). This collection includes texts written in both the Sumerian and the Akkadian languages. The script called cuneiform, is the earliest writing system in the world.

Feature galleries

The feature galleries make up the core structure of the Spurlock Museum. The galleries feature exhibits on the ancient

, East and Southeast

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

, and the indigenous cultures of the

. * Workman Gallery of Ancient Mediterranean Cultures * Workman Gallery of Asian Cultures * Faletti Gallery of African Cultures * Laubin Gallery of American Indian Cultures * Leavitt Gallery of Middle Eastern Cultures * Simonds Pyatt Gallery of European Cultures Image:P. Oxy. VI 932 private letter on papyrus from Oxyrhynchus, written in a Greek hand of the second century AD.jpg, A private letter on papyrus from Oxyrhynchus, written in a Greek hand of the second century CE (Oxyrhynchus papyrus 932, (1914.21.0010) Image:Spurlock 16.jpg, Ancient Egyptian statue of the pharaoh Khafre (reproduction) Image:Spurlock 12.jpg, Cloth from Indonesia Image:Spurlock 11a.jpg, A collection of artifacts representing ancient Greek religion Image:Spurlock 13.jpg, This barong ket figure is featured during temple festivals on the Island of Bali in Indonesia Image:Spurlock 14.jpg, An assortment of household items from Southeast Asia Image:Spurlock 15.jpg, Jousting armor from the Gallery of European Cultures

Areas

The Spurlock Museum building offers the following public areas and facilities: * Five feature galleries covering Africa, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania, Europe, The Americas, and The Ancient Mediterranean. * The Campbell Gallery, featuring exhibits that change twice a year. * The 215-seat Knight Auditorium, site of lectures by local and visiting scholars as well as performances by musicians, dancers, actors, storytellers, and choral groups. * The Dene W. and Marie C. Zahn Learning Center, a space for small-group activities, including teacher training workshops, craft activities, and hands-on artifact opportunities. * The World Heritage Museum Guild Educational Resource Center, the source of a wide assortment of educational materials for instructors.

References

External links

Official website
{{authority control University museums in Illinois Natural history museums in Illinois Museums in Champaign County, Illinois Museums established in 2002 2002 establishments in Illinois Museums of the ancient Near East in the United States Museums of ancient Greece in the United States Museums of ancient Rome in the United States Egyptological collections in the United States Asian art museums in the United States Native American museums in Illinois Plaster cast collections Buildings and structures of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Buildings and structures in Urbana, Illinois