Sweet Briar College
Museum
Sweet Briar, VA 24595
{P} 434.381.6246
{E} museum@sbc.edu
The Sweet Briar Promise outlines our distinctive approach for providing meaningful, enduring education for women. It includes:
The items in the museum are first and foremost teaching collections, which are used to give students hands-on experience in museum work. This is an exceptional opportunity that many students do not get until graduate school — they learn techniques for object handling, cataloguing, and curatorial standards that are used in museums across the country.
Students also have the opportunity to design their own exhibitions, choosing the objects and writing labels and brochure text for publication. This experience gives SBC graduates an edge in the job market, and has helped our alumnae secure positions at prestigious auction houses such as Christie's in London.
Through the Arts Management and Art History courses that incorporate study of the collections, students may travel to museums such as the National Gallery in Washington and Colonial Williamsburg, where they meet with top-level curators for private tours. Students may also do for-credit internships or volunteer as tour guides in the museum, which is helpful for those wanting to gain experience working with elementary school-aged students.
The museum collections are used by various academic departments, and present particularly rich opportunities for students in history, anthropology, and education.
The museum's collections take you back to Central Virginia's plantation era, showcase the 19th-century decorative arts, and capture more than 100 years of life at Sweet Briar College.
The museum's principal collections consist of the personal possessions of the Fletcher and Williams families — furniture, clothing, lace, silver, jewelry, and other examples of 19th-century decorative arts — purchased both domestically and during a tour of Europe. The collection also includes Chinese and Japanese artifacts from the 1876 Centennial Exhibition held in Philadelphia. Many of the items collected by the families now furnish Sweet Briar House.
The museum features changing exhibits to display artifacts from the principal collection.
Memorabilia including class rings, graduation robes, scrapbooks, formal dining plates from the original dining hall, alumnae gifts, and photographs illustrate campus life from the first class of students to the present. These objects are held within the first room of the museum.
