The Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology is

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

's teaching and research museum. The museum has a gallery in Manning Hall on Brown's campus in

Providence, Rhode Island Providence is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. One of the oldest cities in New England, it was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a Reformed Baptist theologian and religious exile from the Massachusetts Bay ...

. Its Collections Research Center is located in nearby

Bristol, Rhode Island Bristol is a town in Bristol County, Rhode Island, US as well as the historic county seat. The town is built on the traditional territories of the Pokanoket Wampanoag. It is a deep water seaport named after Bristol, England. The population of B ...

Background

History

The Haffenreffer Museum's origins lie in the private collection of industrialist Rudolf F. Haffenreffer. In 1917, Haffenreffer acquired the Mount Hope Grant, a Bristol estate which encompassed the home of Wampanoag sachem

Metacomet Metacomet (1638 – August 12, 1676), also known as Pometacom, Metacom, and by his adopted English name King Philip,J. Louis Giddings James Louis Giddings Jr. (April 10, 1909 – December 9, 1964) was an American archaeologist who made significant contributions to Arctic archaeology.Henry B. Collins,"Obituaries" 12 February 2015 During three decades of his fieldwork in Northwest ...

, the museum's scope expanded to include artifacts from the Arctic, Africa, and Pacific. In 1995 Brown, under the leadership of President

Vartan Gregorian Vartan Gregorian; fa, وارتان گرگوریان (April 8, 1934 – April 15, 2021) was an Armenian-American academic, educator, and historian. He served as president of the Carnegie Corporation from 1997 to 2021. An Armenian born in Ira ...

, purchased the

Old Stone Bank Old Stone Bank was a popular Rhode Island banking institution that was founded in Providence, Rhode Island, Providence in 1819 as a mutual savings bank that was called Providence Institution for Savings. The savings bank was the fourth largest b ...

and Benoni Cooke House as part of a plan to relocate the museum's collection and galleries to

Downtown Providence Downtown is the central economic, political, and cultural district of the city of Providence, Rhode Island. It is bounded on the east by Canal Street and the Providence River, to the north by Smith Street, to the west by Interstate 95, and to th ...

. Brown sold the bank building in 2009, abandoning the plan. In 2006, the Haffenreffer Museum opened a gallery in Manning Hall on Brown's central campus. In 2019, the museum again announced a plan to relocate its collection from Bristol to a consolidated site in Providence, adjacent to the Brown campus. The inventory and planned relocation of the museum's collections is supported by a grant from the

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of New York City in the United States, simply known as Mellon Foundation, is a private foundation with five core areas of interest, and endowed with wealth accumulated by Andrew Mellon of the Mellon family of Pitts ...

Mission

The Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology is Brown University’s teaching museum. A resource across the university, it aims to inspire creative and critical thinking about culture by fostering interdisciplinary understanding of the material world. It provides opportunities for faculty and students to work with collections and the public, teaching through objects and programs in classrooms, in the CultureLab and exhibitions in Manning Hall, and at the Collections Research Center.

Exhibitions

Changing exhibitions in the museum’s gallery in Manning Hall, at the center of Brown University's campus, highlight the museum's collections from around the world and the work of Brown University faculty, staff and students. The museum also offers public lectures, performances, symposia, festivals, school activities, and a broad range of programs and events for all ages.

Educational programs

In addition to extensive educational programs for Brown students, centered in the CultureLab in the Manning Gallery, the Museum provides structured group programs delivered to local schools and an extensive array of public lectures.

Collections

Artifacts

The Museum's holdings total approximately one million items. While strongest in Native North American materials, the museum also contains significant material from Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, including: * 900,000 archeological artifacts excavated by Arctic researchers from National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management lands in Alaska (a federal repository) * 70,000 archeological and 6,000 ethnological objects from elsewhere in North America * 2,500 archeological and 3,000 ethnological items from South and Central America * 40 archeological and 3,000 ethnological items from Africa, some by contemporary artisans * 400 archeological and 400 ethnological items from Europe * 1,100 ethnological items from Asia * 1,500 ethnological items from Oceania

Images

The Haffenreffer Museum Research Collections Center's photographic archive, in addition to collection record shots, contains photographs from the founder's archives, the Spinden collection of images of Central and South America, and field photographs that accompanied collections. The Center library has some 10,000 volumes. Highlights of the collection include: *

Herbert Spinden Herbert Joseph Spinden (1879–1967) was an American anthropologist, archeologist and art historian who specialized in the study of Native American cultures of the US and Mesoamerica. Biography Spinden was born in 1879 in Huron, a small settleme ...

Photographic Archive, with over 20,000 images and documents related to Central American archaeology and ethnography from the early 20th century, including many images of important archaeological sites that have since been altered or destroyed. * The Kensinger Collection has over 5,000 photographs and related field notes and texts from anthropologist Ken Kensinger's research with the Cashinahua of Peru from 1960 to 1996 * The Conti Collection has over 3,000 photographs dating from the late 1950s through to the early 1970s taken by Rhode Island photographer Gino Conti, primarily on the Hopi, Apache and Navaho reservations and in Mexico. * Photographs of Southwest prehistoric petroglyphs taken by Salvatore Mancini, many of which are published by the Museum in the book ''Terra Incognita''. * Lithographs, serigraphs, and two dimensional artwork by and about the

Inuit Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories ...

, the Ainu,

Plains Indians Plains Indians or Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies are the Native American tribes and First Nation band governments who have historically lived on the Interior Plains (the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies) of N ...

and many others.

References

External links

The Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, Brown University
{{authority control Museums in Providence, Rhode Island Archaeological museums in the United States Ethnographic museums in the United States Anthropology museums in the United States Native American museums in Rhode Island Pre-Columbian art museums in the United States African art museums in the United States Bristol, Rhode Island Brown University University museums in Rhode Island Association of Science-Technology Centers member institutions Science museums in Rhode Island Museums established in 1955 1955 establishments in Rhode Island