$2.6 MILLION GRANT WILL BE USED FOR REGIONAL MUSEUM

Southeast Missouri State University will use a $2.6 million, three-year federal grant to develop a regional museum at its River Campus arts school.

University officials said the grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services will fund the hiring of a consultant, an architect, and three new museum positions -- curator, museum educator and an exhibits installer.

It also will pay for equipment, fixtures and supplies for the yet-to-be designed museum, as well as for development of a "museum mobile" that would bring exhibits to area elementary and high schools.

The grant will run from Aug. 1 through July 31, 2004.

U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson and U.S. Sen. Christopher Bond announced the grant in a news release issued Monday by the university.

Emerson said the grant will help improve a "blighted area." The university wants to spend $36 million to develop old St. Vincent's Seminary, a former Catholic seminary on Morgan Oak Street, into a visual and performing arts school that would include a regional museum, recital hall and a theater.

School officials said the grant won't fund any construction work on the museum, designed to replace the existing University Museum. The existing museum operates from cramped quarters in Memorial Hall on the Southeast campus, its location since 1976.

The first steps will be to hire a curator and a consultant, said Dr. Stanley Grand, director of the University Museum.

The existing museum's collections cover archaeology, regional history and fine arts. Its holdings include about 6,000 Mississippian Indian vessels, bowls and other pottery pieces, most of them objects excavated by Thomas Beckwith on his Charleston, Mo., area farm in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Grand said his background is in art history. The university needs a curator with an anthropology background to make the best use of the Beckwith collection, he said.

The fine art collection includes the Louis Houck statuary, more than 40 pieces of which were originally shown at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis as part of the German national exhibit.

University President Dr. Ken Dobbins said late Monday afternoon the museum design will have to fit with the overall architectural scheme of the River Campus, which overlooks the Mississippi River.

Construction of the River Campus depends on money from the state, the city of Cape Girardeau and private gifts, he said.

A lawsuit by Cape Girardeau businessman Jim Drury has held up city funding for the project. But Dobbins said he hopes for a favorable ruling soon from a St. Louis appeals court.

The grant has brought new life to the project, Dobbins said. "I think it has revitalized this project so we can move forward."

Grand said the university will use first-year grant money to hire a consulting firm to study museum needs and space requirements.

"It is important to plan for the museum and its collections first before you plan for the building so you don't get the cart before the horse," he said.

After the first year, an architect would be hired to draw up preliminary plans. The consultant will assist with the architectural and engineering work, university officials said.