Reece Museum

For more than 50 years the Reece Museum has told the many stories of Appalachia. Housing approximately 22,000 artifacts, the Reece collection captures the region's past as well as its contemporary art and culture. Click here to explore the Online Portal.

 

As one of the first museums in Tennessee to be accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, the Reece continues to meet AAM's high standards of excellence. Currently, the Reece is one of only eighteen museums in Tennessee to receive this accreditation.

The Museum began in the late 1920s as a class project created by history professor Maxine Mathews. Under the supervision of ETSU President Charles C. Sherrod, the Museum continued to grow. During the 1930s and 1940s, librarians staffed the Museum and provided tours to visitors. 

 In August 1961, Louise Goff Reece, wife of the late Congressman Brazilla Carroll Reece, donated her husband's personal library, including congressional reports, files, and other materials of educational and historic value, to ETSU. Formally dedicated on October 10, 1965, the B. Carroll Reece Memorial Museum was established as a tribute to the memory of First District Congressman B. Carroll Reece as a "storehouse of knowledge ... for the use of the university's students and the citizens of the state."  

The Reece Museum, a unit of the Center for Appalachian Studies and Services, is free and open to the public. For more information, 423-439-4392.

We invite you to follow us on Facebook, Instragram, Youtube ,  or sign up for email updates.

  • Reece Museum
  • Formally dedicated on October 10, 1965, the B. Carroll Reece Memorial Museum was established as a tribute to the memory of First District Congressman B. Carroll Reece as a "storehouse of knowledge ... for the use of the university's students and the citizens of the state." This image captures the ribbon cutting ceremony.
  • Visitors viewing Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race. The exhibition was produced by the USHMM and traveled to the Reece Museum the fall of 2017.
  • A young artist views his work in the exhibition Exuberance! Kids Make Art about Art curated by Sammie Nicely. The exhibition was in the Reece Museum in 2015.
  • Tibetan monks creating a sand mandala. The monks were at the museum in 2014 as part of a visit sponsored by the Mary B. Martin School of the Arts.
  • Members of the low visual and blind community take part in a tour specifically designed for them. Using works in the 2017 traveling exhibition A New Subjectivity: Figurative Painting After 2000, the Reece developed scripts, texture boards and composition boards to make the artwork more accessible to those with low or no vision at all.
  • Visitors to the museum enjoy the works of Mike Smith in his solo exhibition entitled Parting Shots in 2017.
  • Reece Museum
  • A visitor views supporting material in the 2015 traveling exhibition Victory from Within: The American Prisoner of War Experience.
  • View of Exposed Spaces, and exhibition by Marissa Angel, Rickey Bump and Kelsey Ellis. All artists were pursuing their MFA's at the time.

Click on icons below to view online catalogs

Nicely Collection

 

 

 

Dali Catalog


Pandemic Collection

 

 

 

 

Share