The Johnson Library & Museum (JLM) in Osceola, Missouri holds public lectures every spring and fall. The fall lecture this year will be held on Thursday, November 16, 2023 beginning with a smorgasbord meal at 6:00 p.m., followed by the lecture and discussion at 7:00, followed by a tour of the library for those who are interested, conducted by president Thomas M. Johnson II, a grandson of its founder. The event is free and open to the public. Ample parking is available in front of the Johnson Library & Museum. 

This fall’s lecture will be on the topic of “Shakespeare Our Contemporary.” The presenters will be Dr. Tita French Baumlin and Dr. James S. Baumlin. Tita Baumlin is an MSU Emeritus Faculty member and a Shakespearean scholar. Jim Baumlin, MSU Distinguished Professor of English, is a cultural critic focusing on Shakespeare in popular culture. Their talk will explore the importance of Macbeth to the 21st century. 

The Missouri State University Libraries and the Johnson Library & Museum have a longstanding, ongoing collaborative relationship. The MSU Libraries provides metadata and conservation services for selected, important items in the Johnson Library. The MSU Libraries has had a representative on the Board of the Johnson Library & Museum for years, first Dave Richards and now Tom Peters.

The MSU Libraries also has digitized the two card catalogs of the Johnson Library. This digital version of the two card catalogs is the result of a 2021 grant-funded project sponsored by the Missouri Humanities Council (MHC), with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Work is ongoing to transcribe the cards for enhanced searching.   

The Johnson Library & Museum is located at 220 Main Street in Osceola. It is a multi-generational, family library located in Osceola, Missouri, founded in 1899 by the Neoplatonic bibliophile Thomas Moore Johnson (1851-1919). The son of a U.S. senator, Thomas Moore Johnson was born in Osceola, where he served as mayor, prosecuting attorney, and school superintendent. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame, which is where his interest in philosophy started. An ardent Platonist, he was actively involved in national and international philosophical and esoteric circles of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He produced translations, published journals, and collected rare books. He corresponded with dozens of intellectuals and prominent figures worldwide, including Henry James Sr., Bronson Alcott, and President Grover Cleveland.

Johnson was an attorney by trade, but his true passion involved the translation and dissemination of Platonic philosophy. A prodigious translator of Greek works, Johnson amassed a library of around 8,000 volumes—hundreds of which were printed in the 16th and 17th centuries and covered philosophy, religion, Greek and Latin literature, metaphysics, and intellectual history. In 1915, he was hailed by Lt. Governor William Rock Painter as “Missouri’s greatest living man.” He represents the way in which people in the Ozarks have not always been isolated from global concerns but, instead, have maintained connections to ideas that have been central to the humanities across time and space.

Over the decades the library has grown and been enhanced by the work of Dr. Helen M. Johnson, a Sanskrit scholar, and Thomas M. Johnson II.