Fossils to Film: The Best of SMU

Complementing Building on the Boulevard: Celebrating 20 Years of the Meadows’s New Home is Fossils to Film: The Best of SMU’s Collections, celebrates the museum’s unique association with the University.

For the first time, the Meadows will host highlights from nine distinct campus collections at once, including the Underwood Law Library, G. William Jones Film and Video Collection, Bywaters Special Collections, Hamon Arts Library, the Shuler Museum of Paleontology, DeGolyer Library, the Department of Anthropology Archaeology Resource Collections, Bridwell Library and the noted University Art Collection.

Managed by the Meadows, the University Art Collection is comprised of works donated by alumni and friends of SMU in which prominent Texas artists, including the influential painters Jerry Bywaters and Florence McClung, feature heavily. These collections are among the most important in North Texas. Over 100 exquisite works of art, intriguing artifacts and rare specimens will be on display, many of which will be exhibited outside their home departments for the first time. From the Pleistocene epoch to the present, these diverse holdings include the earliest surviving crocodile skull, the only surviving footage of Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 visit to Dallas, and the earliest illuminated manuscript in the state. These items are comprised of donations, as well as university acquisitions and groundbreaking discoveries uncovered at excavations by SMU faculty, staff and students.

Official Site