UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — When the Susan Welch Liberal Arts Building opens its doors in early 2025, it will serve as the high-visibility home to nine Penn State College of the Liberal Arts units — among them the Matson Museum of Anthropology.

The move will mark the start of a new chapter for the 31-year-old museum, which is devoted to the study of human culture and supports teaching, research and outreach initiatives within the Department of Anthropology. And thanks to a $49,470 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ Inspire! Grants for Small Museums program, the museum will be able to publish the digitized catalog of its entire collection, making it searchable for faculty, students, staff and the public.

“Many of the things museums are doing now are cloud based, allowing them to reach a lot more people,” said James Doyle, Matson Museum director and associate research professor of anthropology. “Also, many faculty members don’t know what’s in the collection, so having the database online and searchable will make it much easier for them to utilize it. It will also provide students with the opportunity to curate online-exclusive exhibits.”

The new and upgraded Matson will come with a main exhibition area and teaching collections storage area on the Welch Building’s first floor, regularly updated glass cases in the main lobby and a storage area with student workspace on the ground floor. In addition to being a significant aesthetic upgrade, the more accessible space will allow the museum to expand its programming and educational mission.

“What’s great about moving to a new building is the opportunity to rethink a whole museum from scratch — that doesn’t come along every day,” Doyle said. “Design-wise, I’m really excited about it. I think it’s going to maximize the gallery space in a way we can show more of the collection, rotate things more often and get more visibility, access and a new level of energy and engagement from the public.”

Now closed in its longtime Carpenter Building space and set to reopen in the Welch Building in April, the Matson has been bustling with pre-move activity in recent months. A team of students meticulously helped prepare the museum’s more than 13,000 artifacts — everything from pottery to textiles to spears, spanning thousands of years in age — for professional packing, with some objects destined for custom-made archival boxes constructed to last 10 to 15 years, Doyle said.

The boxes will all be housed on-site in the new space’s high-density shelving storage system. Every item, Doyle said, has been given its own barcode label to ensure easy accessibility. And the museum recently received a $9,333 Preservation Assistance Grant for Smaller Institutions from the National Endowment for the Humanities that funded a consulting conservator who examined the condition of the museum’s collection of over 800 global textiles in advance of the move.

“When we pack the boxes, we have as many objects that can fit in the box, but we have the barcode stickers on the outside. Then there’s no need to handle the objects for inventory purposes,” Doyle said. “We’re really investing in long-term ethical storage solutions — it’s going to be a huge game changer. We made sure to get top-of-the-line storage cabinets on the ground floor-level storage area and the teaching collection storage next to the classroom on the first floor, which will house things commonly pulled for biological anthropology or archaeology courses. Or, we can prepare things for specific events or classes and have them in that space.”

Doyle came to the Matson in 2021 after serving as the assistant curator for Arts of the Ancient Americas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The Welch Building was already into its design phase, but he was still able to have his share of input on the planning process.

Among the things he advocated for was ample flexibility for the main museum space, which will include casework made with non-reflective glass that will allow for enhanced viewing experiences.

“We’ll have large wall cases that are more or less stationary, as well as pedestal cases,” he said. “We have two table cases with programmable drawers. We have a lot of different types of casework in the space that can be put together if we want to do something thematic, or that could be separate. We’ll be able to change it more often, which in the long term will make it a more exciting space. We want to make sure there’s enough activity to bring people from the campus and out in the community back in.”

Doyle also said he sees endless possibilities for students in the space. They’ll have the opportunity to create exhibits, and the classroom and workstation areas will allow them to interact directly with the artifacts for research. Part-time paid positions are available for students seeking experience to build up their portfolios for graduate work or museum careers.

Meanwhile, Doyle is collaborating with Welch Building project managers to include exterior landscaping with native plants that pay thoughtful homage to the Erie, Haudenosaunee, Lenape, Monongahela, Shawnee, Susquehannock and Wahzhazhe Nations, whose ancestral homelands now comprise the University’s campuses.

It’s a productive and transformative time for the Matson, and Doyle couldn’t be more excited about the possibilities that await in its new home.

“I believe in museums and the power to make people more curious about the world outside their bubbles,” he said. “But I also want to ask critical questions and examine how we can better explain anthropology to the public. We can show that through the exciting creations of real people from real places. The Matson’s collection is eclectic but also truly global; we’re thinking about the people behind the objects, the cultural context of these objects. We’re telling you the whole story.”