The anthropology museum in Bristol will close to the public after Aug 30.

The Providence Journal / Andrew Dickerman

For years, Brown University officials have talked about moving the school’s Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology to Providence from its longtime home in Bristol.

In 1995, Brown’s then-president, Vartan Gregorian, announced plans to house the museum in the historic Old Stone Bank Building on South Main Street. When that idea fell through, school officials pledged to find another home for the museum and its world-class collection of Native-American and non-Western art somewhere on Brown’s East Side campus.

Now, it seems, the museum’s moving day may not be far off.

Next week, Brown will effectively shutter the Haffenreffer’s Bristol galleries for good. According to school officials, Brown students, faculty members and visiting scholars will still have access to the museum’s collections, which range from Navajo baskets and pottery to West African woodcarvings to Inuit hunting tools made from whalebones and walrus tusks.

The Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology at Manning Hall, a satellite gallery that opened in a former lecture hall on the Brown campus in 2005, will also remain open.

But the museum’s main complex, a warren of galleries, offices and storage rooms that dates from the early 1920s and that occupies a stunning site overlooking Mount Hope Bay, will be closed to the public as of Aug. 31. At the same time, plans are already under way to relocate the museum and its collection of more than 100,000 artifacts to a site on or near the Brown campus.

“There is general agreement that the museum should be closer to campus,” Brown provost David I. Kertzer explained in a recent interview. “The challenge now — and the question we’ll probably spend the next few months trying to answer — is where that new location will be.”

Kertzer, who’s an anthropologist himself, declined to identify specific sites. But he did say that Brown was exploring several options, including building a new museum on or near its East Side campus, or in the Jewelry District, where the school owns several large properties.

“At this point, it’s still really up in the air,” he said.

In the meantime, Kertzer said the university’s main concern was protecting the museum’s permanent collection, which includes perishable materials such as wood, bone, feathers and animal hide. He said museum curators would spend several months archiving and photographing the collection, before moving it to a temporary storage facility closer to Providence.

Kertzer said the process could take up to a year.

“Given the rarity and fragility of some of the objects in the collection, this is not something you want to rush into,” he said. “At the same time, we need to have access to the materials for research purposes and for our ongoing exhibits at Manning Hall.”

Ironically, the decision to finally move the Haffenreffer wasn’t the result of careful planning on Brown’s part. Instead, the school was responding to a 2007 report from Bristol’s fire marshal that found numerous fire-code violations. Among the most serious: narrow doors and hallways that could slow emergency evacuation, galleries and storage rooms packed with potentially flammable materials and lack of up-to-date sprinkler and fire-control systems.

A subsequent review by the university’s own property management office found even more problems. Among them: outdated storage facilities that threatened some of the museum’s most fragile objects and a lack of federally mandated handicap ramps and access doors.

In the past, the museum might have gotten by with a pledge to fix or improve the problems. But in the post-Station nightclub era, that wasn’t enough.

“Basically, the fire marshal told us that he would not allow the museum to remain open,” Kertzer said. “And our own review essentially confirmed his findings.”

That left Brown officials with two choices. They could spend several million dollars renovating the Haffenreffer’s existing facilities, a less expensive option that would still leave the museum’s trove of art and artifacts a good 45-minute drive from campus. Or they could follow through on plans to move the museum to Providence, a costlier alternative but one that would finally make the state’s premier collection of ethnographic art available to a wider public.

To help with the decision-making process, the university also hired an outside expert — Jeremy A. Sabloff, an anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania — to assess conditions at the museum. According to Kertzer, Sabloff’s report didn’t mince words.

“Basically, he told us that we needed to make the move,” Kertser said. “He said the collection, though relatively small, was of very high quality. And he said that if the Haffenreffer really was going to be a university museum, then it needed to closer to the university.”

While the Haffenreffer’s move is a potential boon for Providence, it’s a painful loss for Bristol and other East Bay communities. Hundreds of local school children visit the museum each year, as do a small but steady trickle of out-of-state tourists and day-trippers.

In fact, some area residents would like to see the museum and its collection remain in Bristol, despite Brown’s oft-stated intention to move them to Providence.

“I think it’s premature to say that the Haffenreffer is definitely moving to Providence,” said Bristol Town Council Chairman Kenneth A. Marshall. “I’ve read the stories, but so far no one from Brown has actually told me that they’ve made a decision regarding the museum.”

Marshall, who has chaired Bristol’s five-member town council since 2002, also said that he might seek to block the university from removing parts of the museum’s collection. Marshall said potential targets would include any objects given to the museum on behalf of the town, as well as any objects associated with local Native-American (mostly Wampanoag and Pokanoket) history.

“I think we’d definitely want to keep anything with a local provenance,” he said.

In response, Brown spokesman Mark Nickel said that representatives from the university had met with Bristol officials in June, shortly before announcing their decision to close the Haffenreffer’s Bristol galleries on Aug. 31. Nickel said the university’s position was clear.

“We informed them of our plans to close the museum and move it to Providence,” he said.

Town officials are also concerned about Brown’s plans for the Mount Hope Grant, the sprawling 375-acre tract that includes the Haffenreffer and several other Brown-owned buildings. Donated to the university by the Haffenreffer family in 1955, the property boasts nearly two miles of shoreline, one of the largest stretches of undeveloped waterfront in Rhode Island.

Asked about Brown’s plans for the area, Kertzer said that any decision involving the Mount Hope Grant would be up to the university’s governing body, the Brown Corporation. But he also said that fears that the university might be getting ready to sell the property were overblown.

“We actually get a lot of use out it,” Kertzer said. “For example, it’s a favorite spot for faculty members who specialize in environmental and ecological issues. There are also some important historical sites — in particular, for the Wampanoags, who have longstanding ties to the area. So whatever happens down the road, the university will certainly have to take those factors into account.”

No doubt those words would have pleased the Haffenreffer’s founder and namesake, Rudolf Frederick Haffenreffer. In fact, Haffenreffer, a wealthy brewery magnate (he was president of the Narragansett Brewing Co.) who assembled an important collection of Native-American art and artifacts, was deeply influenced by Mount Hope’s lore and history.

In particular, Haffenreffer was fascinated by the story of King Philip, the Wampanoag sachem who led a bold but unsuccessful uprising against English settlers in 1675.

According to tradition, several sites on or near Haffenreffer’s Mount Hope estate were associated with Philip, whose real name was Metacom or Metacomet. They include King Philip’s Chair, a chair-like rock formation that was said to be a Wampanoag gathering place, and Cold Spring, the spot where Philip was eventually tracked down and killed in 1676.

In 1923, when Haffenreffer decided to put his collection on public display, he openly paid his respects to the Wampanoag leader. The one-story building that housed the collection (and which ironically was designed to be fireproof) was called the King Philip Museum.

Since then, the museum’s collection has expanded far beyond Haffenreffer’s original cache of Native-American artifacts. Indeed, the museum now boasts important holdings from Asia, Africa, South and Central America and the South Pacific.

Yet the museum’s capacity to store and exhibit its treasures hasn’t kept pace. In fact, during a recent visit, the Haffenreffer’s deputy director, Kevin P. Smith, pointed to several storage areas that were almost literally overflowing with baskets, pottery and other materials.

“It’s definitely a little cramped,” Smith observed. (Smith also noted that despite the lack of space, everything in the museum was properly stored and cared for.)

Meanwhile, the museum’s main gallery was noticeably warm and muggy — not surprising since the Haffenreffer doesn’t have a centralized climate-control system. Instead, it relies on a jumble of electric fans and dehumidifiers to keep temperatures and humidity levels down.

Asked what he plans to do once the Haffenreffer closes, Smith said that the museum’s eight full-time and part-time staff members will begin by digitally photographing the museum’s entire collection. Once complete, the photographs will become part of an electronic database that will allow students and scholars to access the collection online, through their computers.

At the same time, Smith said he was looking forward to the day when he doesn’t have to make the 45-minute drive to Bristol from his home in Providence.

“It’s really not a long drive,” he said. “Unless you have to do it twice a day, everyday.”

The Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology is located at 300 Tower Rd., off Route 136, in Bristol. Hours are Tues.-Sun. 11-5. The museum’s final day of operation is Aug. 30.