Museum Closure

The Heritage Center will relocate to a temporary space in the Rose Litman building on East Campus for a few years. Exhibits will be disassembled and stored and not accessible to the public. While the museum will be closed to the public during this time, staff will be available for research purposes by appointment only starting January 2, 2024.

The Heritage Center is slated to reopen in 2026, the university's sesquicentennial year.

No, but appointments may be scheduled for artifact donation and on-site research. Arrangements can be made starting January 2, 2024, with Mona Lambrecht, Heritage Center curator.

The LEGO model of campus is the center’s most popular exhibit, but it can't be moved. Instead, it will be protected during the restoration to prevent damage.

Museum staff take their professional responsibility to care for the collection seriously, so behind the scenes, the staff and students will work on enhancing documentation and organizing the collection of approximately 40,000 archival items, photographs, three-dimensional artifacts and textiles. A future goal is to make the collections more accessible with an online catalog, so we will also identify key collections and subjects for digitization. It’s likely staff will encounter interesting stories during this time, so articles about objects and people will be shared on the Cabinet of Curiosities page. Staff will also attend to adapting physical exhibits to online experiences and planning new exhibits for the sesquicentennial year.

With a small staff planning and facilitating the move, staff are focused entirely on all its aspects until the closure and completed relocation. Therefore, the museum can only accept new artifact donations beginning in January 2024. Please contact Mona Lambrecht, Heritage Center curator, and she’ll be happy to discuss the donation process. We hope the delay will not deter your interest in donating your piece of CU’s history to the Heritage Center.

If you cannot hold on to your items until 2024, staff advise contacting other local museums or archives to see if your pieces can fill a gap in their collections. Other suggestions include:

• Donating to your local thrift stores or charities. For yearbooks and other books, some local charities sell donated books to help fund the organization.
• Selling items online at auction-style websites like eBay, classified ad websites like Craigslist or through your Facebook Marketplace account.

While preparing to vacate Old Main for the extensive restoration project, staff cannot provide any public or student research assistance. However, museum staff will evaluate research requests from CU departments until our closure on June 1, 2023. Appointments for on-site research at our temporary location may be scheduled with Mona Lambrecht, curator of History and Collections, beginning January 2, 2024.

As with research requests, photographic research and reproductions can only be handled beginning in January 2024. If you require CU-related photographs sooner, contact Norlin Library's Rare and Distinctive Collections for more details.

During our relocation and closure, we will begin digitizing yearbooks for a future online catalog. However, until that is completed, you will need to wait until January 2024, when we can take research requests or schedule in-person research visits. If you need access quickly, please contact Norlin Library’s Rare and Distinctive Collections for assistance.

Other options include:

• Visiting other Boulder and Denver area libraries.
• Purchasing a copy on auction-style websites like eBay.
• Viewing select digitized CU yearbooks at e-yearbook.com for a small fee.

Private donations help sustain the important work at the Heritage Center to ensure CU's rich history lives on for future generations. To make a financial gift, please give through the CU Foundation to the Old Main Heritage Center fund. We welcome individual donations as well as gifts in memory or in honor of someone special.

The Heritage Center is grateful for your interest. Unfortunately, we are currently unable to take volunteers.

Allyson Smith, Director

Mona Lambrecht, Curator of History and Collections