The Museum and its parent institution, the Institute of Paper Science and Technology (IPST), take their educational missions very seriously. Their complementary roles reflect the purpose of serving both public and private sectors as primary sources of information and education about papermaking. Originally known as the Institute of Paper Chemistry (IPC), the Institute was incorporated in 1929 as an educational facility affiliated with Lawrence College in Appleton, Wisconsin, and was housed in the college's gymnasium. IPC's first students were recruited in 1930 (the same year Dard Hunter donated to IPC his bookplate logo, re-cut from an original image by Christoff Weigle in the 1698 publication Book of Trades). Offering both M.S. and Ph.D. degrees since its founding, the Institute has distinguished itself as one of the primary educational programs in paper science and technology. More than fourteen hundred students have studied there. A strong bond has always existed between the Institute and the paper industry, resulting in many advances in the field. Relocated to Atlanta, Georgia in 1989, IPC was renamed IPST. This privately funded graduate research university, now allied with the Georgia Institute of Technology and a member of the University Center in Georgia, continues to be a leader in the education of what it calls the "scientific generalist." While this term helps describe the broad-based multidisciplinary education IPST students receive, most students actually pursue management and research positions in the diverse paper industry.    Amidst the heady and highly technological setting of IPST, the Museum seems to function primarily as an outreach program. While serving the more visible role of educating the general public about paper science and history, it is also a key resource for researchers around the world. As a repository for one of the largest collections of paper and paper-related artifacts, the Museum is uniquely positioned for this role. The Museum serves the IPST students, faculty, and staff as a resource for valuable historical information. It also exposes them to the work of contemporary artists using paper as a primary medium. Not surprisingly, many students within IPST are active in the Museum. While studying science, mathematics, and management, they serve the Museum as volunteers, contributing an added dimension. Having the collection close at hand has encouraged many of them to look to the past for their "roots" and for personal inspiration.    The Museum and Institute have a long and interesting past. Harry Lewis, Dean of Students at IPC, began the Institute of Paper Chemistry's collection in 1936 with various donated objects and memorabilia. Three years later, Dard Hunter housed his personal collection of paper artifacts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge; it became known as the Dard Hunter Paper Museum of MIT. In 1948 D. C. Everest purchased Dard Hunter's Lime Rock Mill papermaking equipment and donated it to IPC for display. With the help of Dean Lewis, IPC acquired in 1954 the Dard Hunter collection from MIT and moved it to Appleton. Hunter became the Museum's Honorary Curator, a position he held until his death in 1966. When IPC relocated to Atlanta in 1989, construction soon began on a new building to complement the existing Industrial Research Facility. The new structure, called the Paper Tricentennial Building in recognition of three hundred years of papermaking in what is now the United States, was designed with a thirty-five hundred square foot museum incorporated into the floor plan to display a portion of the collection. Space for a large library was also included, in part to house the collection's rare books. The Museum gradually developed over the next few years. In 1993 the Dard Hunter Paper Museum, renamed the American Museum of Papermaking to reflect its broad scope and singular position as the only public paper museum in the United States, reopened. Finally, in 1996 the James River Corporation established an endowment for the museum in honor of co-founder and Chairman Emeritus Robert C. Williams, and the museum was given its current name.    With only a handful of paper museums open to the public worldwide, this collection has always been an invaluable educational and research resource. Over its various stages of development since the 1930s, the Museum has remained focused on education. At its core are the original Dard Hunter materials, largely gathered by Hunter before World War II and representing one of the most complete assemblages of paper and papermaking artifacts in the world. Hunter stated in an early Museum brochure that he established the Paper Museum "...with the hope of stimulating interest in the ancient craft of papermaking and promoting understanding of present-day paper and its relation to the graphic arts." Like many collections, interest in, access to, and use of the material has waxed and waned over time. Also like most collections, this museum's initial holdings have been gradually built upon, making it a highly valuable repository for many generous donations of artifacts, a collection with great depth and diversity. Much of the material is irreplaceable and some is unique. Included are over ten thousand papers (many of them with watermarks) and proto-papers from around the world, as well as tools, machines, and manuscripts related to papermaking, reflecting Hunter's quest for information. The library houses more than two thousand rare books on subjects related to paper, including all of Hunter's own publications. Over two hundred paper molds, most watermarked with elaborate sewn or light and shade watermarks, are represented. Items from the archive are rotated through the museum regularly.   Outside of the Museum's entrance rests a giant Samson paper press from Wookey Hole, in Somersetshire, England, circa 1790.  A larger-than-life plaster replica of a vatman forming a sheet of paper at a large wooden vat draws the visitor into the effectively designed Museum. A series of intimate spaces follow, with interpretive displays such as Forerunners to Paper, The Invention of Paper, and The Spread of Papermaking in Europe. Displayed artifacts include proto-paper samples, wood blocks, spirit money, early Chinese and Japanese paper moulds, laid moulds, wove moulds, hand tools for papermaking from around the world, ream wrapper papers, photographs of early paper mills, a short history of books, manuscripts written on handmade papers, watermarked dandy rolls, and the first run of paper made at RittenhouseTown for Continental currency. The Dard Hunter room contains images of Dard Hunter and his Lime Rock Mill. There are several of Dard Hunter's books such as Primitive Papermaking published in 1927, examples of Hunter's moulds and deckles with accompanying back-lit sheets, as well as other artifacts and information about Hunter's life and work. Other spaces include The Spread of Papermaking in the United States, a beautiful back-lit watermark display, a 15 foot-long working model of a Fourdrinier machine, a theater for viewing educational videos on papermaking, and a small gallery for rotating exhibitions of contemporary papermakers, book artists, and printmakers. The Museum effectively combines these spaces to create a thoughtful, educational and enjoyable environment. A small gift store with paper-related items complements the museum.    The educational emphasis of the Museum dovetails neatly into the overall mission of IPST. The Museum has a multi-faceted approach to education, including tours for thousands of school children each year; traveling exhibitions, lectures, demonstrations, and workshops; and a web site. A new initiative, the Dard Hunter Research Center, will provide secure, archival storage for the collection and will create several ways researchers can access the vast holdings. This will help to fulfill the Museum's mission, "...to collect, preserve, increase and disseminate knowledge about papermaking - past, present and future."   The Museum's Curator, Cindy Bowden, estimates that the Museum attracts as many as ten thousand visitors annually, from more than twenty-five countries. A large percentage of these guests are school groups. Printmaking, papermaking, and book art programs from regional colleges and universities, such as the Atlanta College of Art, The University of Georgia Lamar Dodd School of Art, and the University of Alabama Book Arts Program, all utilize this resource. A common visit to Atlanta from our own program at the University of Georgia (in nearby Athens) usually includes a trio of print/book/paper sites: Rolling Stone Press Lithography Atelier, Nexus Press, and the Museum. This trip makes for a great morning and early afternoon, including a breakfast stop at the famous Silver Slipper diner, with its original 1950s decor and original 1950s waitresses.   The far-reaching impact of the Museum, almost sixty years old, and its activities would be hard to quantify, but is quite significant. The three traveling exhibitions recently developed by the Museum have reached by far the largest audience. "A Child's View of Papermaking", "Recycling: Lost and Found", and "PaperQuest" were visited by more than half a million people in 1997 alone. Supported by the Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry (TAPPI) and the American Forest & Paper Association (AFPA), these shows have traveled to many locations nationwide, including the Children's Museum of Arkansas, in Little Rock, the Pacific Science Center, in Seattle, and the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley. These exhibitions are geared primarily to children and include interactive learning activities, computer programs, games, videos, and even hand papermaking stations. In my opinion they are some of the most effective educational programs for papermaking the Museum has produced, not just because of the number, diversity, and geographical range of the viewers; they also give young participants hands-on experience in everything from recycling to making their own paper. This outreach to a younger audience should bring new participants to the craft and science of papermaking. After an afternoon of fun in one of the exhibits parents just might hear "I want to be a papermaker when I grow up." Perhaps the next generation of papermakers are being nurtured while they crawl through the giant and colorful 3-D paper machine, pretending they are pulp. Hands-on interaction with the papermaker's art and science, as well as a visual and tactile assimilation of its history through its artifacts and tools, seemed to be an important motivation behind Dard Hunter's vision for students of papermaking pursuing "study of the ancient and honorable craft of papermaking."    With this same vision in mind, the Dard Hunter Research Center has great potential for those interested in using the collection. The Museum has launched a capitol campaign to fund the Center, and the Friends of Dard Hunter membership has contributed seed money to this effort. The Center will include a state-of-the-art, 2,000 square foot facility that will accommodate both long-term archival storage of the material and the varying needs of the curatorial staff and researchers. As catalog records and artifacts are photographed and digitized, writers, students, artists, and scholars will have increasing on-line access to the materials for off-site study, through the already-established web site. Physical access will be more readily available when a research room, with additional levels of security and convenience, is set up next to the storage area. Tables, special lighting, temporary project storage, and many other improvements will benefit everyone. Computerized catalog files will be cross-referenced extensively as artifacts are accessioned and catalogued, to provide various levels of information about each object. Proposals developed by individuals and organizations for research projects involving the Center will be considered and staff will be available by appointment to assist visitors. A recent Survey Grant from the Museum Loan Network, a new program based at MIT, will assist the Museum in surveying about five hundred items in its collection of tools. About one hundred of these will be made available to the Museum Loan Network for possible inclusion in exhibits worldwide. Clearly the Museum is keenly interested in the use as well as the conservation of this impressive resource, and it plans to help facilitate its study by those seeking to contribute to the body of knowledge about the history, science, and practice of papermaking.   Another noteworthy educational function of the Museum is its commitment to hosting exhibitions of contemporary artists working in the allied fields of paper, printmaking, and book arts. Although small, the Museum's exhibition space allows visitors to see artistic applications of many of the processes described by the interpretive displays. Besides presenting the expressive uses of paper, the exhibitions connect the viewer to paper as a living art, not just an ancient craft form transformed through technology to purely utilitarian uses. Exhibitions have ranged from "Edges and Interfaces", a traveling show of prints and artists' books developed by the American Print Alliance; to "A Cultural Language", pulp paintings and handmade books by Cynthia Alderdice; to "The Book ExPress", an exhibition of book arts featuring nineteen artists from the University of Alabama's Book Arts MFA program. An exhibition of handmade paper quilts by Zelda Tanenbaum will open in October 1998, followed by solo exhibitions by artists Sara Gilfert and Lynn Sures. A juried student exhibition is being planned to highlight the work in handmade paper being done in college and university programs. Many of these exhibitions are complemented by lectures, workshops, and demonstrations that allow the community to interact with exhibitors and scholars. In hosting these exhibitions, the Museum provides the public with a broader experience, while giving artists the opportunity to exhibit their work in a space that connects their work historically, physically, and conceptually to a broader discipline. The exhibitions also provide the faculty, staff, and students of IPST with a direct link to the expressive potential of the paper medium, expanding the dialogue among them from the technological to the aesthetic, and reorienting them to the more humanistic side of their chosen fields. That this can make them better scientists, researchers, educators, and managers in the paper industry I have no doubt.    As technology in paper science advances, traditional methods fall farther behind in the time-line of paper history. While the practice of hand papermaking has become somewhat archaic to the mainstream, its institutionalization through academic, non-profit, and outreach programs should be viewed as critical tributaries to that mainstream, creating a culture of expanded interest in and acceptance of this craft. While hand papermakers may always seem uniquely novel, they should also be viewed as important bearers of paper history and practice. Through its efforts and resources, the Museum fulfills a vital role as communicator, a vehicle for the preservation and study of papermaking's important past and continuing contribution to our culture.

‍