Reece Museum

Reece Museum

Reece Museum will be closed from Friday, December 20, 2024 to Friday, January 3, 2025 for Winter Break. The Museum will be available for appointment only visitation January 6 through 17. We will resume normal hours, 9am- 4:30pm, on Monday, January 21, 2025.

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.

Welcome to the Reece Video

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 current mission of the Reece Museum is to serve the Appalachian region through exhibitions, collections, and community engagement.

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.

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  • The front of the Reece Museum.
  • Students view the Sammie L. Nicely Collection in 2023.
  • Various musical instruments in the Reece Permanent Collection.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • A view of the exhibition "Blighted Pine."
  • A student views the Sammie L. Nicely Collection, 2023.
  • A view of the exhibition "Blighted Pine."
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • The front of the Reece Museum building.
  • A visitor views supporting material in the 2015 traveling exhibition Victory from Within: The American Prisoner of War Experience.
  • Visitors to the museum enjoy the works of Mike Smith in his solo exhibition entitled Parting Shots in 2017.

Click on icons below to view online catalogs

Nicely Collection

 

 

 

Dali Catalog


Pandemic Collection