UWP Luce Center houses artwork, museum and area history
PLATTEVILLE- The recently renovated Ullsvik Hall introduced a new facility, the Luce Center, to the University of Wisconsin-Platteville.
The Luce Center is named for 1939 Platteville Teachers College alumnus Charles Luce. Luce donated a large gift to support the development of the facility in large part due to the ties of four generations of his family to the institution.
The new facility is located on the ground floor of Ullsvik Hall. The area encompasses the Harry and Laura Nohr Gallery; a museum, which is new to UWP; and the relocated Southwest Wisconsin Room, formerly in the basement of Karrmann Library.
The Nohr Gallery held special value to Charles Luce because Harry and Laura were his uncle and aunt. After Harry passed in 1977, a gift from the Nohr family estate assisted in beginning the first art gallery on campus.
Archivist James Hibbard has been charged with designing the approximately 2,400 square foot museum.
"This is the opportunity of a career to help design a museum and an archive space," says Hibbard.
The museum's primary focus is UW-Platteville's history, but there will also be a collection of local minerals and an Isle of Man collection. The Isle of Man is an area between northern England and Northern Ireland.
Mary Kelly, a member in the Platteville community, put the Isle of Man collection together. For the past year, she collected donations from across the United States of items that highlight the island and the people that emigrated from there to Southwest Wisconsin and the United States.
A significant difference between the accommodations in Karrmann Library and Ullsvik Hall is storage space. Hibbard says they were "filled to the gills" in Karrmann Library. There is substantially more storage room for the plethora of donations that come in.
The Luce Center is also the new home of the Southwest Wisconsin Room, which is really three rooms in one. First, it houses UWP's archives. Items date back as far as 1839 from the beginning of the Platteville Academy, including materials from both the Mining and Normal Schools.
The archives include chancellors' papers, University of Wisconsin System publications, committee minutes, office records, class schedules, photographs, course catalogs, directories, yearbooks and the school newspaper, Exponent. Many items such as local history books, old letters, diaries, journals and family records were donated to the university.
"It is important to understand who we are as a community and it is fundamental for any institution to house its records as an account of what happened," says Hibbard.
Second, the Southwest Wisconsin Room is a genealogical and local history room, containing materials pertaining to Southwest Wisconsin and the lead mining region.
Third, the room houses the Wisconsin Historical Society's Area Research Center, ARC, for Southwest Wisconsin. The Platteville site has housed documents from Crawford, Grant, Green, Iowa, Lafayette and Richland Counties ever since The Wisconsin Historical Society ARC farmed out its collections to the UW System about 40 years ago. Types of documents found in the ARC are records of school board meetings; birth, death and marriage certificates; public, court and naturalization records; deeds; tax rolls and business ledgers.
Relocating the archives to Ullsvik Hall places the Southwest Wisconsin Room in a high profile location near Prospective Student Services, which coordinates campus visits with high school students for potential enrollment into the university. It's a great way for UWP to put its "best foot forward" when recruiting, says Hibbard. They get a look at the area's past, what is happening now and plans for the university's future.
The Luce Center continues to provide research facilities similar to what Karrmann Library provided. Anyone can utilize the comfortable research rooms when they visit the facility. Items may not be checked out but copy machines and printers are available for use at a nominal fee.
Hibbard encourages anyone with a curiosity of the past to visit the facilities. During the move, hours will be similar to the current hours, which are Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m.; Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from noon to 4 p.m.; and Tuesday from noon to 8 p.m.
"I like to welcome anyone and make him or her feel at home," says Hibbard.
Contact: James Hibbard, UWP archivist, (608) 342-1229, hibbardj@uwplatt.edu Written by: Emily Yttri, UWP Public Relations, (608) 342-1194, yttrie@uwplatt.edu
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