DECEMBER 22, 2011 ISSUE
ASU Authorizes App Cultural Museum Disposition
On December 9, the Board of Trustees of the ASU Endowment Fund approved the disposition of items formerly housed by the Appalachian Cultural Museum.
The action is the next step in finding new homes for the collection after ASU announced in February this year that it would not reopen the museum, closed since 2006.
Since March, a committee of faculty and staff met to assess and catalog every item in the collection, completing its work in October, said Neva Specht, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and history professor, who chaired the committee. The committee also worked to identify which items were on loan and which items were gifts.
“Now a smaller committee is finalizing getting loans returned and making plans to disperse the remainder of the collection during the next few months,” said Specht. “We will be working with the new provost and with Vice Chancellor [for Business Affairs] Greg Lovins to develop a plan.”
Specht said about 30 nonprofit organizations have made inquiries about the collection.
According to board materials, the museum’s inventory includes items such as musical instruments, products and equipment from Watauga’s old kraut factory, memorabilia from the old Land of Oz theme park in Beech Mountain, a log cabin, furniture, corn husk dolls, vintage ski equipment, Cherokee pottery and a basket, blacksmithing elements, 1800s-era school books and a table from Blowing Rock’s Mayview Manor.
The Appalachian Cultural Museum opened in 1989 on University Hall Drive off of Blowing Rock Road in Boone as an offshoot of ASU’s Appalachian Studies program that began in the late 1970s.
Some collection items loaned to the museum have already been returned, including two racecars owned by racing legend Junior Johnson, which were loaded on trucks and taken to the NASCAR museum in Darlington, S.C., on March 17, 2006.
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