Highlights Archives
Museum Artifacts Travel Far and Wide
Everyone expects to see "the Mouse" when traveling to Orlando, but did you know that a Wisconsin Historical Museum object recently resided in an Orlando museum? Or that one of the museum's paintings is in Missouri over the summer? Or that nine of its samplers are on exhibit in Chicago? Or that several of its artifacts are now overseas?
The museum has a collection of more than 110,000 historical items and 390,000 archeological artifacts. These objects are used to tell stories about Wisconsin and its people from the last 11,000 years in the permanent and temporary exhibits at the museum. What is often not known is that many of the museum's artifacts are often borrowed by other cultural institutions, not just here in Wisconsin but in other states as well.
A shawl, once owned and worn by Abraham Lincoln and now part of the museum's collections, was on exhibit at the Orange County (Florida) Regional History Center from January to May 2007. According to the story provided to the museum when the shawl was donated, Lincoln wore it on the train ride from Springfield, Illinois, to his first inauguration as president in Washington, DC. In Florida, the shawl occupied a featured spot in a Civil War exhibit called "Liberty on the Border."
The Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Missouri–Columbia just opened a special exhibit on Missouri's most celebrated 19th-century painter, George Caleb Bingham. The exhibit, "Exploration and Interpretation and the Work of George Caleb Bingham," explores Bingham's various approaches to portraiture, and will compare his portrait of Wisconsin sculptor Vinnie Ream Hoxie from the museum's collections, to another portrait of her from the collections of the State Historical Society of Missouri.
When the American Association of Museums had its annual meeting in Chicago in mid- May 2007, staff from museums all over the world had the opportunity to view nine samplers from the collection of the Wisconsin Historical Museum. The samplers were made in the eastern United States from the late 1700s through the early 1800s, and were brought with families moving westward to Wisconsin. One such sampler was made in 1809 by Cecilia Lewis of Flushing, New York. The Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs is displaying the samplers in an exhibition titled "Stitched Together" through July 28, 2007, at two locations, the Clarke House Museum and the Chicago Cultural Center.
Occasionally, the Wisconsin Historical Museum even loans objects to museums in other countries. The museum recently acquired the glove and scorecards used by and the hole flag presented to Sherri Steinhauer of Madison, Wisconsin, when she won the Weetabix Women's British Open in August, 2006. Steinhauer is the second woman in history to win the British Open three times. Her artifacts will be part of an exhibition at the British Golf Museum starting June 30, 2007.
So, the next time you visit a museum in Wisconsin or any other part of the country, be sure to check the origin of the objects you see; they may just come from the Wisconsin Historical Museum collections!
:: Posted June 22, 2007
|
