Storied Objects
Relics and Tales from the Thomas R. Baker Museum
After a devastating fire destroyed the original Rollins Museum in 1909, the college made a broad public appeal via letters, posters, and newspaper ads for donations of “museum quality” specimens (of any type), in hopes that the museum could eventually be reestablished. Individuals and institutions across the country responded generously, and by 1920 almost 10,000 objects of cultural, historical, and natural significance had been received. These donations would form the nucleus of what came to be called the Thomas R. Baker Museum of Natural History, a campus and community fixture until its closure in the 1970s.
This exhibition relates the story of the eclectic Baker Museum collection by highlighting the life histories or “biographies” of a selection of its cultural artifacts, which collectively span five continents and more than 5,000 years of the human past. The disparate origins and meandering trajectories of these individual works help to illuminate a remarkable entanglement of historical events, individuals, and artifacts whose paths intersected at Rollins during the first half of the 20th century. Storied Objects: Relics and Tales of the Thomas R. Baker Museum is the culmination of a collaboration between Zackary I. Gilmore, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Archaeology at Rollins College, Robert Vander Poppen., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Classical Art & Archaeology, and students from their Public Archaeology and Digital Methods in Archaeology courses.
See the the 360-degree virtual view of this exhibition.
