BYU Seeking Museum Funds

Brigham Young University officials have approved plans to raise funds for three new museums on campus.

As funds become available, a fine arts museum, a museum of peoples and cultures, and an earth science museum will be built adjacent to the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum, forming a four-museum complex.

“The success of the Ramses II exhibit, plus the rich store of our own collections that have no exhibit facility, have made it painfully obvious that we have a great need for additional exhibit facilities,” said university President Jeffrey R. Holland. The Ramses II exhibit—seventy-two artifacts from ancient Egypt—was on display at BYU from October 1985 through April 5 of this year. BYU was the first place in the United States offered the opportunity to display the Ramses exhibit, and about half a million visitors filed through the Bean Museum to see it.

The purpose of the new museums would be to display the university’s collections and accommodate scholars, students, and others who wish to study them, President Holland said. BYU has “a superb fine arts collection, an outstanding collection of artifacts and ethnic material from peoples and cultures of the past and present, and one of the world’s largest and most important collections of dinosaur fossils.”