Dartmouth College. Museum
Biography
Throughout this early period, the College’s art and artifacts were housed in a variety of locations. Until 1811 they coexisted on the third floor of Dartmouth Hall, separating two student residence areas. By the late 1820s, Thornton Hall became the new home to the Dartmouth College Library and Dartmouth Gallery of Paintings, while the Dartmouth College Museum collection, composed of scientific, ethnographic, archaeological, and natural history objects, remained in Dartmouth Hall. The two sections of the collection would remain separated until 1840, when Reed Hall was completed, and they were reunited again for thirty years.The objects then began a series of separate migrations. The museum collections moved to Culver Hall (since demolished) in 1871, and the Library and Gallery of Paintings went to Wilson Hall when it opened in 1885, complete with a gallery on its top floor. In 1895 the museum collections were once again moved, to Butterfield Hall, which housed the Butterfield Museum of Paleontology, Archaeology, Ethnology, and Kindred Sciences thanks to a donation by Ralph W. Butterfield, Class of 1839. In 1928 Butterfield Hall was demolished to make room for Baker Library, and the bulk of the museum collection went to Wilson Hall.
Found in 1 Collection or Record:
Dartmouth College, Museum records
The collection contains contact prints from glass plate negatives of anthropological objects in the Butterfield Museum before its move to Wilson Hall ca. 1927. Also included are contact sheets of exhibits and objects in the College Museum in Wilson Hall, ca 1957-1974, with inventory.