The Office of Cultural Properties works to preserve and exhibit the Johns Hopkins University Campus Collection through acquisition, care, and curricular integration, and provides collections and exhibition services to the Sheridan Libraries & University Museums.
The Johns Hopkins University Campus Collection began with a gift. In 1880, just four years after the founding of the university, Baltimore & Ohio Railroad president John Work Garrett presented a portrait of Johns Hopkins to the university’s board of trustees. Since then, the collection has grown through gifts, commissions, and purchases.
In 2007 the President’s Office established the Office of Cultural Properties in the Sheridan Libraries and created a curatorial position to steward the Campus Collection upon the recommendation of the Homewood Arts Task Force (pdf). The collection continues to expand under the current curator, with the primary aim of serving faculty and students across all disciplines.
The Office of Cultural Properties:
- Oversees the University Campus Collection located in buildings and on the grounds of the university’s Homewood, Peabody, Harbor East, and Washington D.C. campuses;
- Provides collections management policies and services in support of university risk management and gift planning goals for over 14,000 objects in the Evergreen Museum & Library, Homewood Museum, and University Campus collections;
- Staffs the Johns Hopkins University Art Review Panel and Cultural Properties Committee, the Sheridan Libraries & University Museums Exhibitions Committee, and Gallery Q in the Milton S. Eisenhower Library.