UNIVERSITY MEMORIES: LITTLE MOMENTS IN A SMALL MUSEUM

Dr. Jenny Strayer showed a self-portrait of John Ford that will be on display in June at the University Museum.

A pottery shard is one of the pieces in the Beckwith Collection which is stored at the University Museum.

This bronze sculpture entitled "Bird Rattler" by Hans Egon Reiss is on display at the University Museum.

Dr. Jenny Strayer became the director of the University Museum in January 1997, her first job after receiving her doctorate in American studies from the University of Iowa. She spent Friday hanging the last exhibits of her tenure: acquisitions made during her years here.

Strayer is leaving her position to join her husband, Greg Jones, in Toledo, Ohio. Jones, the former director of the Arts Council of Southeast Missouri, accepted a job earlier this year with the Toledo Museum of Art.

Jones grew up in Toledo and Strayer was born there. Her mother lives nearby.

Strayer said the couple's last two moves have been in support of her own career, so now it's Jones' turn. "Commuting just doesn't work," she said.

After 2 1/2 years in a job that included both directing the museum and teaching, Strayer said she welcomes the break. But she has taken a position as an adjunct teacher at the University of Toledo Center for the Visual Arts.

The University of Toledo has 400 art majors, twice the number at Southeast. "There are lots of things going on in Toledo," she says.

For Strayer, the highlights of her tenure at the museum were the Richard Rauchenberg show, the Lucia Autorino Salemme exhibit in November 1998 and the Jake Wells reception in the fall of 1997.

The August 1998 exhibition of Rauchenberg's "Chow Bag Series" signaled the University Museum's first presentation of the work of a big-name artist. "It was interesting to see the reactions of the art students, that it was at this museum," she said.

The 79-year-old Autorino Salemme came from New York City to be honored at the reception for her show here. She provided art students an opportunity to meet someone who had succeeded in the New York art world.

Perhaps most memorable was the reception honoring the beloved local painter and muralist Wells.

"The hundreds of people who came threw themselves on the floor at Jake's feet," Strayer said.

"I was touched by how many lives he had changed.

"He is the subject of great affection and respect."

But Strayer said fulfillment in the job came from little moments, the individual epiphanies that can occur when people go among art. "You can tell something has happened for them," she said. "They see the world in a new way.

"That's why I became interested in museum work," she said, "because of the way museums have changed my life."

Strayer has mixed feelings about leaving when the planning for the River Campus museum has just begun. She knows only that it currently is projected to have 20,000 square feet of space, more than three times the amount in the current museum.

But her work here has taught Strayer that "a small museum can still have important experiences."

Southeast is conducting a national search for a new museum director. The new director will do some teaching but will focus on museum work until the River Campus museum is finished, according to Dr. Martin Jones, dean of the College of Liberal Arts.

The university has hired the new director a half-time assistant, Dr. Eric Clements. Since 1995, Clements has been the education director of the Western Museum of Mining and Industry in Colorado Springs. He also will teach history classes.