Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology
The Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology is Brown University's teaching and research museum. The museum has a gallery in Manning Hall on Brown's campus in Providence, Rhode Island. Its Collections Research Center is located in nearby Bristol, Rhode Island. Background. History. The Haffenreffer Museum's origins lie in the private collection of industrialist Rudolf F. Haffenreffer. In 1917, Haffenreffer acquired the Mount Hope Grant, a Bristol estate which encompassed the home of Wampanoag sachem Metacomet. Haffenreffer discovered a number of artifacts on the property and acquired others during trips through the Western United States. In  1928, he constructed the Haffenreffer Museum of the American Indian to house his collection. Following his death in 1954, Haffenreffer's family donated his collection and estate to Brown University. Under the tenure of founding director J. Louis Giddings, the museum's scope expanded to include artifacts from the Arctic, Africa, and Pacific. In 1995 Brown, under the leadership of President Vartan Gregorian, purchased the Old Stone Bank and Benoni Cooke House as part of a plan to relocate the museum's collection and galleries to Downtown Providence. Brown sold the bank building in 2009, abandoning the plan. In 2006 , the Haffenreffer Museum opened a gallery in Manning Hall on Brown's central campus. In 2019, the museum again announced a plan to relocate its collection from Bristol to a consolidated site in Providence, adjacent to the Brown campus. The inventory and planned relocation of the museum's collections is supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Mission. The Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology is Brown University’s teaching museum. A resource across the university, it aims to inspire creative and critical thinking about culture by fostering interdisciplinary understanding of the material world. It provides opportunities for faculty  and students to work with collections and the public, teaching through objects and programs in classrooms, in the CultureLab and exhibitions in Manning Hall, and at the Collections Research Center. Exhibitions. Changing exhibitions in the museum’s gallery in Manning Hall, at the center of Brown University's campus, highlight the museum's collections from around the world and the work of Brown University faculty, staff and students. The museum also offers public lectures, performances, symposia, festivals, school activities, and a broad range of programs and events for all ages. Educational programs. In addition to extensive educational programs for Brown  students, centered in the CultureLab in the Manning Gallery, the Museum provides structured group programs delivered to local schools and an extensive array of public lectures. Collections. Artifacts. The Museum's holdings total approximately one million items. While strongest in Native North American materials, the museum also contains significant material from Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, including: Images. The Haffenreffer Museum Research Collections Center's photographic archive, in addition to collection record shots, contains photographs from the founder's archives, the Spinden collection of images of Central and South America, and field photographs that accompanied collections. The  Center library has some 10,000 volumes. Highlights of the collection include: