Marjorie Barrick Museum - History

History

The founding of a natural history museum at the university—then an institution only a decade-old, known as Nevada Southern University—began with a collection of specimens from the Desert Research Institute (DRI), the Nevada System of Higher Education's graduate research institute. In September 1967, the DRI opened a small museum facility in premises across from the university's grounds, as part of an expansion of DRI's activities into southern Nevada. The museum was created under the direction of archaeologist Richard H. Brooks, assistant research professor at the university and a researcher (later director) of the DRI-affiliated Nevada Archaeological Survey. Its exhibits consisted of DRI's local collection of living desert animal specimens and Native American artifacts.

In 1969 the university took over the management of the museum from DRI. Brooks remained as director of the university-affiliated museum, and during his tenure the museum's funding was established and further permanent exhibits acquired. The most significant acquisition occurred in 1979, when a private collection of pre-Columbian art was donated by a former UNLV alumna, Mannetta Braunstein, and her husband Michael. These pieces would form the basis of a broadening collection of Mesoamerican and Aridoamerican cultural artifacts, acquired through other donations and further additions from the Braunsteins' purchases in Latin American markets.

In the late 1970s the museum began the process of relocating to premises situated on the UNLV campus, to occupy a building that had contained the university's original gymnasium. Renovations to accommodate the museum were completed in 1981. Further alterations and expansions to the building were subsequently undertaken, and a research laboratory wing was added in 1994.

Beginning in 1979 the museum's anthropological collections were greatly expanded, with the subsequent additions of donated collections of ethnographic and archaeological artifacts representing Native American and pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures.

Brooks left the position in 1981. His successor as museum director was ornithologist and former UNLV president (1973–78) Donald Baepler, who was returning to the university campus after a three-year term as chancellor of the Nevada university system. Baepler was instrumental in establishing UNLV's Harry Reid Environmental Research Center, and the museum was reorganised to became one of the center's operating divisions. Baepler retired as museum director in 2004, retained a title as emeritus executive director of the museum.

In 1989 the museum was renamed in honor of Marjorie Barrick, a longstanding benefactor of the university. In 1980 Barrick, a former showgirl and prominent philanthropist married to a Las Vegas real estate developer, had gifted UNLV with an endowment of some $1.2million from her late husband's estate, to fund an ongoing series of public lectures at the university. Speakers at the Barrick Lecture Series have included international figures and heads of state, such as Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Mikhail Gorbachev and F. W. de Klerk.

In 2012, the Barrick closed its doors to begin renovation on the museum and to undergo a change of hands with departments. The Marjorie Barrick is no longer affiliated with the Harry Reid Center and is now apart of the College of Fine Arts on campus of UNLV. The exhibition hall went through a drastic renovation in how the museum flows from showcase to showcase. The Marjorie Barrick Museum has teamed up with the LVAM: Las Vegas Art Museum and the collection from the LVAM is now being showcased at the Barrick.