Ole Miss Museum builds ties with Oxford seniors through art visits
Museum staff took art to Elison Assisted Living after seniors toured Oxford galleries, turning a one-time visit into ongoing access for older residents.
Residents of Elison Assisted Living of Oxford did not just pass through the University of Mississippi Museum for a single outing. They slowed down in the galleries, studied the artwork and shared memories, then got a second visit when museum education curator Kassidy Franz brought hands-on art activities back to them at the assisted living center.
That back-and-forth model is becoming part of how the museum is reaching Oxford beyond campus. Franz said the aim is to make art feel more personal and less like a one-time trip, while museum director Karleen Gardner has argued that museums should meet people where they are and also go out into the community. For older residents who may not make a formal museum visit on their own, that shift changes access from occasional to ongoing.
The visit centered on the Mary Buie and Kate Skipwith collections, tying the experience to Oxford’s own cultural history. Mary Carter Skipwith Buie and Kate Anderson Skipwith were half-sisters from Oxford whose shared love of art, history and travel helped create what would become the museum. Their collection included more than 300 fans from Europe and Asia, decorative arts, porcelain, silver, Mary Buie’s paintings and family memorabilia from the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and World War I.
The museum itself was established in Oxford in 1939 as the Mary Buie Museum and now says it holds the largest collection of fine arts and artifacts at an academic museum in Mississippi. The museum complex also includes Rowan Oak, William Faulkner’s home, and Walton-Young Historic House. The family’s local story reaches back to around 1870, when they settled in Oxford after living in New Orleans, Virginia and Tennessee. Mary Buie studied art in Chicago and worked as a copy artist for Marshall Field’s Company, while Kate Skipwith built the Mary Buie Museum after Mary’s death in 1937 and gifted it to the city in 1939.
The University of Mississippi acquired the museum in 1974 and added the Kate Skipwith Teaching Museum in 1977. Today, the museum says its education department creates opportunities for visitors of all ages to explore, learn and connect with art in meaningful ways. In 2025, it recorded 5,166 learning opportunities through education and outreach, along with 11 internships and two graduate assistantships, and its classes and programming remain free with support from Friends of the Museum. The Elison partnership shows how those numbers translate into daily life in Lafayette County: more residents seeing art, more conversation around it and a local institution reaching people who might otherwise stay outside its doors.
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