Generous Gift Benefits USU's Museum of Anthropology

Utah State University’s Museum of Anthropology is the recipient of a gift of ethnographic collections from the estate of Lyman S. and Vivian B. Willardson of Logan.

“This is a most generous gift,” said USU faculty member and museum director Bonnie Pitblado. “The collection is unique because it represents items from around the world that were gathered throughout the couple’s lives.”

 

Bruce Crane is a certified appraiser who noted the donation’s importance.

 

“This collection represents a wide variety of periods of time and cultures,” Crane said. “Its value to the Museum of Anthropology will be noteworthy in both its rarity of items, but also in the opportunity it affords for research.”

 

Lyman S. Willardson, who died Oct. 4, 2005, held a master’s degree from Utah State and a doctorate from The Ohio State University in agricultural engineering. He worked as an irrigation and drainage engineer throughout the world and, later in life, accepted a teaching position as a professor of irrigation and drainage engineering at USU. He used his international experiences while serving as an advisor to international students.

 

Vivian B. Willardson holds a bachelor’s degree in home economics from Utah State and was a teacher for many years. She resides in an assisted living center in Logan.

 

“My parents’ lives were dedicated to teaching,” said Laura Huffman, youngest of the Willardson’s six children and facilitator of the gift. “This donation continues that teaching legacy in many ways. It benefits the university students who will use the collection for study and interpretive exhibits. It also benefits the many students who come to the museum on field trips and learn from the exhibits.”

 

Through Willardson’s occupation, he and his family spent a great deal of time traveling or living abroad. Those travels provided the base for the collection that has been donated to the museum.

 

The collection includes a wide range of ethnographic and archaeological items. Most distinctive among the ethnographic items are a Haitian voodoo mask, African wood carvings and Middle Eastern rugs and textiles, said museum coordinator Sara Lundberg. The collection also includes a variety of archaeological items, including pre-Columbian stone and clay effigies, whistles, cylinder seals and ax heads unearthed from irrigation ditches in Honduras.

 

As artists themselves, the Willardsons enjoyed finding and purchasing art by the people they met.

 

“When traveling abroad, they bought art because they valued the artistic talents of others,” said Huffman. “They loved to see how people naturally express their desires for art and beauty in mediums that are available to them in daily living. They also brought art home as inspiration for creating art themselves.”

 

Willardson often brought tools home for similar reasons.

 

“He appreciated human genius to solve problems with locally available material,” Huffman said.

 

An example is the collection of Persian rugs — remarkable on their own — but they arrived at the museum together with the tools used to make them many decades ago, Lundberg said.

 

“As a child, I thought the best part of every trip my father took was his return home,” Huffman said. “I couldn’t wait for the opening of the suitcase. He would gather all the children around and open the suitcase on the family room floor. Then he would begin pulling objects and gifts out while telling about the people and places the objects came from. I loved to hear him explain about other people and cultures and the adventures he had. I learned much of the world through the opening of my father’s suitcase. Now others will be able to learn as much as I did from his trips abroad.”

 

According to its director, the Museum of Anthropology has grown recently through generous monetary and gift-in-kind donations from individuals, including Lyman S. and Vivian B. Willardson.

 

“Members of the museum staff thank the donors and their families for helping us fulfill our mission to teach and inform the residents of Cache Valley about the field of anthropology — the study of all people, everywhere, through all time,” said Pitblado.

 

Those who wish to make donations to the museum should contact Lundberg at (435) 797-7545 or anthmuse@cc.usu.edu.

 

The Museum of Anthropology is open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Parking is available in the Terrace Parking facility, and the museum will validate permits.

 

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