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Gifts for the Ages: Expanding the Longyear Museum Collection
August 9, 2010
The environmentally controlled vaults and galleries at Longyear Museum provide ideal conditions for preserving and sharing historically important material related to Mary Baker Eddy and the pioneering workers in the Christian Science movement. Thanks to the generosity of Longyear members and friends, the Museum’s collection continues to grow.
Since 2001 Museum friends have donated nearly nine hundred volumes of the various editions of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy. Multiple copies of these works are essential to preservation and research work, and to exhibiting. Some of these are displayed in an exhibit case in the C. S. Harding Mott II Gallery at the Museum, featuring the more than four hundred numbered printings of Science and Health published during Mrs. Eddy’s lifetime. Thanks to these donations, the Museum is well on its way toward the goal of expanding its collection to include three copies of each edition of Mrs. Eddy’s published writings.
Bookcase containing the many editions of
Mary Baker Eddy’s major work, Science and Health
with Key to the Scriptures. “Mary Baker Eddy:
A Spiritual Journey” exhibit, C.S. Harding Mott II
Gallery, Longyear Museum
“Historic evidence enables the serious researcher to accurately trace Mrs. Eddy’s footsteps in her discovery and in bringing it to the world. It’s also valuable for the Museum to share these things with visitors, enabling them to glimpse the process Mary Baker Eddy went through to keep clarifying her message,” said Cheryl Moneyhun, Director of Museum Collections. “As she learned, she shared. Not only was Mrs. Eddy the Discoverer and Founder and Leader of Christian Science, she was, of course, its premiere teacher.”
If you have early editions of Mary Baker Eddy’s writings, including Science and Health, and feel that these — or other items of historical interest — need a new home, the Longyear Curatorial Department welcomes your inquiries. An exploratory conversation with a collections manager will help determine if there is a need in the collection for the artifacts you wish to share. Not everything offered to the Museum, however, can be accepted. Under the Museum’s collections management policy, Longyear is limited in what it can accept, care for, and preserve. To schedule a conversation with a collections manager, please call 800.277.8943, ext. 170.
Photo Above: Some recent acquisitions of Science and Health in the Longyear Museum collection.
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