Mathers Museum of World Cultures

Museums, Est.1963

The Mathers Museum of World Cultures is located on the west side of the Indiana University campus, in Bloomington, Indiana. It is dedicated to preserving and promoting knowledge of the world's cultures through its collections, exhibits, and programs.

The museum was formally established on July 1963 as the IU Museum. It was founded as a research, teaching, and exhibition arm of the departments of anthropology, folklore, and history.

The museum was located on the IU campus in Maxwell Hall and then in the Student Building before it was shifted to its current location at 416 N. Indiana Avenue.

In 1983, the new building was formally opened to the public. The ‘William Hammond Mathers Museum’ is named after the son of Frank Mathers - a noted former IU professor of chemistry.

The Mathers Museum is a treasure-house of more than 20,000 objects and 10,000 photographs representing cultures from each of the world's inhabited continents – African, Asian/Pacific-Oceanian, and Latin American - and American Historical Collections.

These materials have been collected and stored to serve the museum's primary mission as a teaching museum within a university setting. The collection strengths include traditional musical instruments, photographs of Native Americans and the Bloomington community, Inupiaq and Yupik Eskimo materials, and Pawnee material culture.

The African Collection includes more than 2,900 pieces of African materials representing countries throughout West, East, and Central Africa.

The American Historical Collection holds several significant collections of American Folk Art and American/Indiana historical materials, which include the artifacts documenting home textile industries, carpentry, stone working, and the business records of a Bedford, Indiana, blacksmith shop, ca. 1930-1960.

The Latin American collection consists of approximately 3,000 artifacts; most of them date to the mid-20th century and even older. Featuring more than 400 pieces, the textile collection contains a range of materials from Southern Indiana quilts to Tibetan thankas.

The highlights of the musical instrument collection are that of the Laura Boulton Collection and the Georg Herzog-Hans van Hornbostel Collection. With more than 2,000 ethnomusicology items, the museum is one of the largest such collections in the country.

The museum's collections are available to scholars, students, and interested members of the public for research purposes. The museum provides audiences of diverse ages and backgrounds opportunities for informal, non-classroom education about the world's cultural heritage through exhibits and educational programming.

It also enhances classroom teaching, both at Indiana University and in other Indiana schools at all levels.

Mathers Museum hosts a number of events that are fun and educational as well as exhibitions. The museum also provides a unique setting for reception, dinner, holiday party, or other special events.

The museum store, with toys and games, books, masks, figurines, pottery, and a wide range of jewelry from the four corners of the globe, reflects the diversity of cultures found in the rest of the Museum.