Special exhibition: October 18, 2024-January 20, 2025
Included with general admission.
Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM) has more than 140 years of revolutionary museum achievements. Throughout this time, the Museum has changed and grown, developing exciting new methods in research, education, and preservation. Each shift was in part inspired by changes happening in the world.
In this special exhibition, join us in exploring our own story—past, present, and future.
Visitors will learn:
- How the Museum’s collections got its start with schoolchildren at Milwaukee’s German-English Academy in the 1850s.
- Why and where Museum staff traveled for research and collecting expeditions.
- Who Carl Akeley was and why he is known for inventing the “Milwaukee-style” diorama, which set a new standard for natural history exhibits.
- How the Museum’s exhibits and programming have been groundbreaking in their design, collaboration with community members, and incorporation of advances in technology throughout the past 60 years.
- Which four buildings the Museum has called home over its 140-year history.
- Why the Museum is now building a new home set to open in 2027 that will continue its tradition of trailblazing and innovation.
- Why museums must be ever-evolving to best reflect the larger scientific, social, political, technological, and economic changes occurring in the world.
The exhibition will feature:
- Old photos from the Museum’s archives that depict some of the very first exhibits.
- A deep dive into the history, complexity, and evolution of the use of taxidermy in museums.
- “Follow the Object” interactive that allows visitors to follow five Museum collections items over time to discover how technology, new research methods, and cultural responsiveness have changed our perspectives about them.
- Artifacts and old exhibit props that have been kept behind the scenes.
