University Museum Ranked Among 20 Best College Art Museums

Complex Art & Design website praises breadth of museum's collections, community ties

University of Mississippi Museum

OXFORD, Miss. – Citing how the museum balances “their dedication to the local community with a commitment to expanding students’ world views,” the Complex Art & Design website has put the University of Mississippi Museum at No. 17 on its list of the 20 Best College Art Museums.

The ranking puts the University Museum ahead of the Yale University Art Gallery and in the company of campus museums at Harvard, Howard and Princeton universities.

“Inclusion in national recognition of this nature provides a wide range of benefits to museums, from morale-building and wider funding opportunities, to enhanced exhibition and program partnership opportunities with peer institutions,” said Robert Saarnio, University Museum director. “This honor comes at a time when we are dynamically expanding our exhibition, program and educational impacts and outreach. On behalf of the entire museum staff, and all of the museum’s many supporters and friends, I express our gratitude and our sincere pleasure at this news.”

University Museum offers an array of holdings, including Southern folk art, Greek and Roman antiquities, 19th century scientific instruments and American fine art. The museum also manages Rowan Oak, home of Nobel Prize winning writer William Faulkner, and the Walton-Young Historic House, which was once home to critic and satirist Stark Young.

“Recollecting: 1980-2012, Works by Ron Dale” is currently being featured at the museum.

University Museum is at the intersection of University Avenue and Fifth Street in Oxford. Hours are 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. For more information, visit http://museum.olemiss.edu or call 662-915-7073.