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Distributed May 12, 2005
Contact Tracie Sweeney

A former lecture space in Manning Hall will become a gallery showcasing treasures from the University’s Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology in Bristol, R.I. The gallery opens to the public on May 28 with Warp Speeds.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A former lecture space in Brown University’s Manning Hall on The College Green has been converted into a gallery that will feature treasures from the University's Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, located in Bristol, R.I.

Mantle border (detail)
Camelid wool and cotton, from the Paracas Peninsula, Peru, ca. 200-100 B.C. Gift of Mr. Louis Slavitz, 1991.
Image courtesy of the Haffenreffer Museum

Manning Gallery will become an extension of the Haffenreffer, considered one of the Northeast’s leading anthropological teaching museums. The gallery opens to the public on Saturday, May 28, with Warp Speeds, an exhibition that coincides with Commencement Weekend. Warp Speeds showcases the Haffenreffer’s collection of textiles from Africa, the Americas and Southeast Asia while examining the subject of globalization from an anthropological perspective. The gallery will be open on Saturday, May 28, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; regular gallery hours for Warp Speeds are Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

It was President Ruth J. Simmons’ idea “to convert this hall into a museum gallery to give the Haffenreffer a chance to be at the heart of the campus,” said Shepard Krech, the museum’s director and professor of anthropology and environmental studies. “We want to give people a sense of what we have 18 miles away from campus. This will give a whole new audience a chance to see our collection.”

University officials have long expressed a desire to relocate the museum to Providence. Under President Vartan Gregorian, museum representatives and University officials considered using the Old Stone Bank property on South Main Street, but that facility would have required extensive renovations to make it suitable for use as a museum. Although the Manning space is much smaller, Krech said the renovations have been relatively minor and mostly hidden; the biggest improvements have been made to the heating system and the hall’s lighting.

The Haffenreffer Museum in Bristol is home to more than 100,000 artifacts from the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. The museum hosts 10,000 visitors each year, including some 5,000 school children who come on class field trips, take classes in Native American crafts and attend summer camp.

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