The University of Mississippi Museum is a museum

Museum

A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...

 owned and operated by the University of Mississippi

University of Mississippi

The University of Mississippi, also known as Ole Miss, is a public, coeducational research university located in Oxford, Mississippi. Founded in 1844, the school is composed of the main campus in Oxford, four branch campuses located in Booneville, Grenada, Tupelo, and Southaven as well as the...

 in Oxford, Mississippi

Oxford, Mississippi

Oxford is a city in, and the county seat of, Lafayette County, Mississippi, United States. Founded in 1835, it was named after the British university city of Oxford in hopes of having the state university located there, which it did successfully attract....

. The museum is designed to appeal to both a popular and scholarly audience, with a collection that emphasizes objects of regional interest. In addition to collections of Southern folk art

Folk art

Folk art encompasses art produced from an indigenous culture or by peasants or other laboring tradespeople. In contrast to fine art, folk art is primarily utilitarian and decorative rather than purely aesthetic....

, Greek

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

 and Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 antiquities

Antiquities

Antiquities, nearly always used in the plural in this sense, is a term for objects from Antiquity, especially the civilizations of the Mediterranean: the Classical antiquity of Greece and Rome, Ancient Egypt and the other Ancient Near Eastern cultures...

, 19th century scientific instruments, and American fine art, the museum owns and operates Rowan Oak

Rowan Oak

Rowan Oak, also known as William Faulkner House, is William Faulkner's former home in Oxford, Mississippi. It is a primitive Greek Revival house built in the 1840s by Robert Sheegog. Faulkner purchased the house when it was in disrepair in the 1930s and did many of the renovations himself. Other...

, an historic house museum that once was the dwelling of William Faulkner

William Faulkner

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...

. The Museum has also since 1995 provided tours of the Walton-Young Historic House, a restored Victorian household.

History

The museum has its origins in the Mary Buie Museum, opened in Oxford in 1939. The museum was named for Mary Skipwith Buie, an artist who left her estate to the city on her death in 1937. It also contained the collection of Mary's sister, Kate Skipwith, who possessed not only antiques, but such memorabilia as American Revolutionary War

American Revolutionary War

The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...

 correspondence by notable Americans George Washington

George Washington

George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...

, John Hancock

John Hancock

John Hancock was a merchant, statesman, and prominent Patriot of the American Revolution. He served as president of the Second Continental Congress and was the first and third Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts...

, and John Adams

John Adams

John Adams was an American lawyer, statesman, diplomat and political theorist. A leading champion of independence in 1776, he was the second President of the United States...

. From 1939 to 1974, the museum was run and expanded by the City of Oxford with funds from the Skipwith family and governmental programs.

The University of Mississippi took over the museum in 1974 and expanded it with the new Kate Skipwith Teaching Museum wing in 1975, funded in part by the Adair Skipwith Foundation. It combined its collections with those already displayed in the Mary Buie Museum. Collectively, the Walton-Young Historic House, the Buie Museum and the Skipwith Museum are called the University Museums. The University Museums are researching a potential expansion with the addition of a William Faulkner wing.