Peddle Provides Major Gift to Museum

The Museum’s 2,000-piece David M. Robinson Collection of Greek and Roman artifacts—the largest collection of its kind held by a university museum in the South—stands out for its significance.

Thanks to the generosity of Marjorie Peddle of Oxford, gallery spaces are being prepared to increase physical and intellectual access to the collection. The major donor and her husband, the late Frank Peddle, purchased part of the collection for the University Museum in 1960. Marjorie Peddle recently provided a $150,000 gift for the exhibition to be expanded and the audience experience enriched with display and technology enhancements.

While parts of the collection’s pieces, dating from 1500 B.C. to A.D. 300, have been displayed for decades, more of the vast collection will be seen on a rotating basis once the 18-month project is complete. Four gallery spaces of the Mary Buie Museum, part of the museum complex, are being designed to house the collection by consultant Alchemy Studio in Maplewood, N.J.

“We are profoundly grateful to Mrs. Peddle for such an extraordinary and gracious gift,” said Robert Saarnio. “To honor this incredible generosity, the renovated central gallery with the reinstalled Robinson Collection will be named the Marjorie W. and Frank S. Peddle Jr. Gallery. Major celebrations and a scholarly symposium will accompany the reopening.”

Laura Peddle Sale of Oxford, a daughter, said her father, a native of Philadelphia, Pa., and her mother, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., wanted the collection to remain at Ole Miss.

“Daddy understood the value of the collection and how special it was. He did not want the collection to go to another university. He appreciated art and had grown up in a part of the country where he was exposed to a lot of different museums. I’m so proud this gallery will be named for my parents because it reflects the unselfish gift they provided many years ago as well as this last gift to display the collection properly. ”

For more information on providing support to the University Museum, contact Angela Barlow, development officer, at 662-915-3181 or ambarlow@olemiss.edu.