IU Museums and Nature Centers
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Description
IU Bloomington has many great resources open to both students and the public, including museums, archives, and nature centers.
1. IU Collections Teaching, Research & Exhibition Center (CTREC)
Announced by IU President McRobbie in spring of 2020, the new Collections Teaching, Research & Exhibition Center (CTREC) will engage students, faculty, and public audiences with IU’s world-class collections that span disciplines, time periods, and geography. These include many significant art, cultural, and historical collections across all of IU’s nine campuses. It will be housed in the McCalla School and serve as an accessible hub to faculty, students, visiting researchers, and the public, allowing collections to be used across disciplinary boundaries, so that objects can be connected in new and imaginative ways, including via physical exhibits, digital content, classroom instruction, hands-on learning lab interactions, and public performances in the building’s new multipurpose room.
2. The Andrew Wylie House - Wylie House Museum
The Wylie House Museum is a historic house museum owned by Indiana University that provides a glimpse into the home life of a family in the 1840s. The museum is also one of the oldest homes in Bloomington and offers a collection of early to mid-19th-century American furnishings, including many original pieces from the Wylie family. Letters and personal papers from the Wylie family can also be found in the university's archives. The Wylies were a prominent family in Bloomington, Indiana during the 19th century. The house was built in 1835 and was home to Indiana University's first president, Andrew Wylie. After his death, cousin Theophilus Wylie purchased the home and generations of Wylie family resided there until 1913. Now, the Wylie House is a museum restored to its original appearance and the museum staff work. to preserve and study the house, artifacts, and documents in order to provide a deeper understanding of Bloomington's early years.
3. Hoagy Carmichael Room
The Hoagy Carmichael Room, designed as a memorial to Indiana's famous songwriter and performing artist, contains a representative sample of the large collection of memorabilia donated by the Carmichael family to Indiana University. The collection includes sound recordings, music manuscripts, photographs, lyric sheets, correspondence, scrapbooks, paintings, and other personal effects, and represents the largest holding of materials pertaining to Hoagy Carmichael available anywhere in the world. It is located in Morrison Hall Room 006 and is part of the Archives of Traditional Music.
4. Lilly Library
The Lilly Library is the leading rare books, manuscripts, and special collections repository at Indiana University Bloomington. It serves as a resource for scholars throughout the world and is open to anyone who is interested in the library’s collections. Its holdings include 450,000 books, more than 150,000 pieces of sheet music, and more than 8.5 million manuscripts. Exhibits are on display throughout the year. Public tours are available every Friday at 2pm or by appointment. A multi-million dollar renovation was announced in the spring of 2019. The renovation will result in the library’s temporary closure.
5. IU Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
The IU Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology is Indiana University’s newest museum. Opening to the public in 2022, IUMAA draws upon the strengths and rich collections of the former Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology and Mathers Museum of World Cultures. Together, these two collections of over 5 million artifacts span across a broad range of the human experience from Indiana’s first peoples to contemporary communities. Through cutting-edge technology and exhibition design, as well as special building features, the new museum will provide visitors a new way of seeing its collections, exhibits, and programs from the “inside-out.” And access to behind-the-scenes of the museum will enable visitors to understand the meaning and purpose of the museum collections, and the museum’s research and study of artifacts from Indiana’s past and around the world.
