CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Two years shy of its centennial celebration, the Spurlock Museum at the University of Illinois has been declared among the best. It has received accreditation from the American Association of Museums the highest national recognition for a museum.
Of the nation’s estimated 17,500 museums, only 775, or fewer than 5 percent, have received AAM accreditation, according to the association.
“This is a major milestone for the museum,” according to Spurlock director Wayne Pitard, who is a professor in the Program for the Study of Religion at Illinois. “We’re really proud of this.”
According to the AAM, the accreditation recognizes a museum “for its commitment to excellence in all that it does: governance, collections stewardship, public programs, financial stability, high professional standards and continued institutional improvement.”
In other words, the museum is being recognized for doing everything well, Pitard said.
“Accreditation really gives you a credibility in the museum community. It makes it more likely that you can bring in higher-quality visiting exhibits. It gives us more of a say in the development of standards within the museum community. It simply makes us much more visible around the state and the country.”
Twenty-four other museums in Illinois have received accreditation, half of those in Chicago. Among the handful downstate are the Krannert Art Museum, also on campus, and the Early American Museum in Mahomet.
According to Pitard, the now-named Spurlock Museum traces its roots to 1911, when the university’s board of trustees approved the establishment of two museums, one for classical studies and one for European culture, which then opened the following year. (Thus the planning under way for a yearlong centennial celebration in 2011.) A third museum, focusing on the ancient Near East, was established in 1917.
All three museums were housed on the fourth floor of Lincoln Hall and decades later were merged, eventually becoming the World Heritage Museum.
But seeking accreditation was not realistic, Pitard said, until the museum moved into its new building on the east side of campus in 2002, made possible with a gift from William R. and Clarice V. Spurlock. The conditions in Lincoln Hall were far from adequate and the staff too small, he said. The museum, in fact, had to be closed in the summer because of the heat.
In the transition to the new building, however, under previous director Douglas Brewer, the museum staff decided accreditation was possible and began the application process, Pitard said.
The first step was a massive self-study questionnaire requiring “hundreds and hundreds of pages of documentation” and several years of work, he said. The final step came in April when a team of peer reviewers came to campus, toured the museum, asked a lot of questions, and talked to numerous individuals, from the staff, the museum’s board and guild, and top campus administration.
Word of the accreditation came with a phone call on Aug. 11, followed the next week with a formal letter and then an Aug. 24 news release, Pitard said.
“The accreditation is a real tribute to the staff here, because the only way that you can get this is by having a top-caliber staff. And you’ve got to have the kind of support that we’ve gotten from the administration since the Spurlock opened. They’ve just been extremely supportive of the museum and that has borne this fruit.”
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