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No Access To UA Museum Collection Without Staff, Director Says Gentry: Items would be prone to damage without proper oversight By Johnathon Williams The Morning News (Arkansas) June 19, 2003 FAYETTEVILLE -- Johnnie Gentry, director of the University Museum, said Wednesday that no access should be provided to the 7 million items in the museum's collection without a professional staff to manage it. The current collection staff at the University of Arkansas must be retained if anyone is to use the collection, he said. "We have the staff. We must find the money to keep them employed. That's the answer," he said. UA administrators announced Monday that they will close the museum and lay off eight staff members at the end of this year. The decision came as part of a budget cut in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. All colleges were ordered to cut 2 percent of their budgets by university administrators. Fulbright College will save about $340,000 by eliminating the museum, more than half of its required 2 percent. The museum began its collection about 130 years ago on the Fayetteville campus. It is the only natural-history museum in the area, and it contains artifacts and specimens from fields such as biology, geology and anthropology. When the decision was announced, administrators said that Gentry would remain on staff to provide access to the museum collection for faculty and student research. Gentry, a tenured faculty member, is the only member of the museum staff who will keep his job. He spoke to The Morning News/NWAonline.net on Wednesday for the first time about the closing of the museum and the future of its collection. Gentry, a botanist by training, said he is not qualified to care for all the items in the collection on his own. Both the skills and time required are too much for one person, he said. The museum employs four people in its collection facility, including two curators, one manager and a secretary. Four others work in the museum's main building on campus on Garland Avenue south of Maple Street. He said his role after the museum is closed is still being determined, but he does not see himself providing access to the collection. He will be a professor of biological sciences in Fulbright College, not director of the museum. As a regular faculty member with teaching and research responsibilities, he will have no time to manage the museum collection, he said. Allowing access to the collection without a professional staff would damage its contents and records, he said. It would be unethical and irresponsible to do so, he said. The decision to close the museum was made by Donald Bobbitt, dean of Fulbright College. In telephone interviews Monday and Tuesday, Bobbitt said the money saved by closing the museum is equivalent to the salaries of about 15 non-tenured lecturers or instructors. That is significant, he said, because those 15 instructors could teach as many as 1,300 students in a semester. Tuition is charged per credit hour, and most courses award three credit hours. That group of students would pay the college $495,000 in tuition. More importantly, he said, laying off that many instructors would mean students could not get courses necessary for their degrees. Bobbitt said there was no aspect of the college's budget he did not consider in making the cuts. The remainder of the required 2 percent was found through cuts in maintenance money and through the elimination of some non-tenured instructors in the music and mathematics departments, he said. "This was difficult, but it was the only thing we could do to make the constraints we were under," he said. Gentry said he does not blame Bobbitt for the decision. It wasn't Bobbitt's decision to cut 2 percent from the college's budget, he said. He credits Bobbitt with giving the eight staff members who will lose their jobs a full six months to find other work. Gentry declined to comment publicly on who or what was ultimately responsible for the museum's closing. The museum collection contains many items that were borrowed from other institutions and now must be returned. Walking through the museum gallery Wednesday afternoon, Gentry stopped at the Paragould Meteorite, an 800-plus-pound rock that fell to Arkansas from space on Feb. 17, 1930. It's one of the three largest meteorites ever found in the United States. The meteor, one of Gentry's favorite pieces in the collection, is on loan from the Field Museum in Chicago, where he worked before coming to the university in 1979. Now, he must prepare to ship the meteor back. He doubts it will ever appear in Arkansas again. The last day the museum will be open to the public is Oct. 31, Gentry said. Regular hours are from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. In July and August, the museum is open from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Gentry said hours also may be reduced in the fall. ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
