Ten Eyck Museum

COACH REISCHMAN

THOUGHTS ON THE ORIGIN OF THE

TEN EYCK MUSEUM

For several years we had been trying to locate someone within SARA that had the time and energy to “freshen up” the porch area of the boathouse. It think the pictures that were there had been in place since the remodel in 1987. This was going to be a major undertaking and we struggled to find someone that had the time to take it on. We had several boxes of “stuff”, and I do mean several, in the attic of the boathouse and we just needed someone to make sense of it all. The Chancellor has been encouraging collaboration between athletics and academic programs so, Morey Mossovitz, our Associate Athletic Director of Facilities, had the idea of asking the Museum Studies graduate program if they were interested. As luck would have it they were looking for a project for their “Historic Curatorship” and “Museum Graphics and Communication” classes. The students and professors were awesome! They spent most of last spring climbing through the attic and combing through university archives to learn the history of the program and look for photos, old letters, and other artifacts.

Our goal was to create a space that alumni could certainly wander through and reminisce but also to give visiting recruits (and current athletes) a sense of the awesome history of the program. What people saw at the Evening at Ten Eyck was the porch area about 75% finished. When the students started digging in to the available information it was apparent that we could do a whole room on the Ten Eyck’s alone. Most visitors enter the boathouse through the downstairs lobby so it seemed appropriate that they walk into an area honoring James Ten Eyck. That project will be completed later this fall along with the finishing touches upstairs on the porch.

The biggest challenge for the students was to decide what items to leave out. We had a lot of really cool stuff and I wish we had more space to include everything that was worthy. We decided to not query the alums for memorabilia because we already had a lot of material and we really have no way to properly store the stuff we were not using.

All the credit for the display goes to Professor’s Andrew Salutti and Emily Stokes-Rees and their students. They were fantastic to work with! OO

SU Rowing Museum at Ten Eyck Boathouse- a collaboration of Graduate Program of Museum Studies and the Syracuse Rowing Teams