Museums - University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History

The University of Oregon Museum was founded in 1932 and the current building opened in 1987. Following the creation of the museum, it began to receive gifts of Oregon and Northwest ethnographic materials. Faculty members in anthropology and in geography have added similar material, and the museum now holds the largest and most important collection of archaeological materials from Oregon, a group of objects that spans 15,000 years. The museum also holds one of Oregon’s most significant collections of Native American cultural artifacts. Another part of the collection features textiles, musical instruments, weapons, and other objects representing traditional technologies and everyday life from Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Africa, Oceania (in particular, New Guinea) and Africa (including Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Congo). Together, these collections comprise more than half a million objects.
Among the museum’s holdings are items discovered by Dr. Thomas Condon, the founding father of Oregon geology, during his nineteenth and twentieth century explorations of the John Day region. Material discovered by pioneering archaeologist Dr. Luther Cressman during his early twentieth century desert cave excavations is also included. Important artifacts include an important cache of 10,000-year-old sagebrush bark sandals, extensive fossil collections, and several hundred western Indian baskets made before 1900.
Displayable ethnographic items from outside the United States include more than 900 from Africa, 700 from Asia, 600 from Oceania, 550 from Central America, and about 200 each from the Philippines and South America. The ethnographic textile catalog contains more than 200 total entries, with a series of complete costumes from eastern Europe and Southeast Asia forming important components. Collections worthy of display in terms of significance and condition (as opposed to collections purely of research value) are estimated to total about 30,000 items, although fewer than five percent of them are on display at any one time.
The museum’s collections division is also the state repository of Oregon’s geological, biological, and cultural specimens. These include definitive Mesozoic fossils, the world’s oldest shoes, an unparalleled collection of ancient and modern basketry, and evidence of North America’s oldest known house.