WISCONSIN FAMILY

As Milwaukee Public Museum prepares for new home, what current exhibits matter to you?

Amy Schwabe
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The Milwaukee Public Museum's future home will get $40 million in state funding under a plan that has received preliminary approval from the Legislature.

The Milwaukee Public Museum has been a Milwaukee institution since it opened in 1884.

After years of planning, construction of a new museum is set for later this year. Museum officials say the new space will preserve and showcase the museum's many artifacts better than the current building, which was constructed in the 1960s.

Museum staff have been taking Milwaukeeans’ desires about the new museum’s exhibits into consideration through surveys, focus groups and community meetings as they plan the new building’s design. Administrators have said that “some aspects of the exhibits will be familiar.” And they’ve confirmed that, just like in the current museum, there will be both a planetarium and a butterfly garden.

A recent statement from the museum that they won't be able to carry over entire exhibits into the new museum sparked concern among Milwaukee residents who feel nostalgic about their favorite MPM exhibits, especially the Streets of Old Milwaukee. Museum administrators said that while there "will be a highly immersive walkthrough of Milwaukee that explores our marvelous city's history, nature, and cultures," it will not be called Streets of Old Milwaukee. That announcement sparked a change.org petition opposing "the dismantlement and removal of one of the city's most beloved, meaningful, and culturally significant exhibits."

As the details continue to get ironed out and we find out this spring what will be in the new museum, one thing is certain. There are a lot of nostalgic, meaningful exhibits in MPM for a lot of Milwaukeeans.

Here are the ones that stand out in my memories.

The dinosaurs

Evelyn Klausen, left, 13, stands behind a tree while her father, Daryl Klausen, mother, Amanda, and sister, Grace, 17, look at a dinosaur exhibit in the Third Planet wing of the Milwaukee Public Museum.

A key part of the Third Planet exhibit — the museum’s dinosaur diorama — stands out in my memory for one reason: walking up the steps and hearing the thunder in the distance as the lightning flashes in the sky, illuminating the T-rex as it eats its fallen prey.

My two kids have always requested we visit that exhibit, even during the brief times in their early childhood when the exhibit’s realism scared them and we had to rush past it as they took brief glances in between the rolls of thunder.

Once my younger daughter stopped being afraid of the exhibit, she would spend long minutes pointing out the many parts of the display I hadn’t even noticed as she went through her dinosaur phase — that uncanny time in so many preschoolers’ lives where they seem to absorb obscure dinosaur facts like sponges and their little-kid vocabulary is suddenly interspersed with correctly pronounced, extremely long dinosaur names.

The igloo

It doesn't get much cooler than actually getting to sleep in the igloo at the Milwaukee Public Museum.

When my sister and I were young, we always asked our mom to take us to the third-floor Arctic exhibit, where we would patiently wait our turn to go inside the igloo. We marveled at the mannequins, as they seemed to “feel” so warm living inside a house made of ice, we wondered how it was possible to have a fire without melting their home and we always swore to our mother that the walls of the igloo were definitely colder than the rest of the museum.

Under the sea

Kids often rush to the Living Oceans exhibit to climb the ramp and peer at the different sea creatures that live under the sea. But if you venture into the rooms tucked under the ramp, you'll see quite a collection of seashells -- more than your kids have likely ever found on the beach.

When you climb the stairs of the Living Ocean exhibit and peek through the windows to see models of sea creatures, you feel like you're walking through the ocean. Even though I always felt like I remembered the exhibit so well from my childhood, my own kids have always been able to point out animals I had never noticed before.

The Streets of Old Milwaukee

The Milwaukee Public Museum Streets of Old Milwaukee exhibit in Milwaukee on Mar. 21, 2022.

If my field trip experiences — both from my own childhood and in chaperoning those of my kids' — are any indication, the Streets of Old Milwaukee is a favorite of many children. There’s just something appealing about walking into an area that is basically like a bigger playhouse — more like a play village — where mannequins are going about their daily lives in Milwaukee at the turn of the 20th century.

Of course, the candy store has always been a favorite (where you can buy real candy!). So was the movie theater. And I’ve always loved just noticing the buildings with familiar Milwaukee names like Usinger’s and the Pfister and what they looked like more than 100 years ago.

And, of course, the rattlesnake button

The "Bison Hunt on Horseback" diorama is a permanent exhibit on second floor of the Milwaukee Public Museum.

Anything hands-on is always fun for kids, especially if it’s something you have to find and especially if, like with me and with my kids, there was always a slight fear that this time it wouldn’t be there. That's the rattlesnake button for me.

As countless Milwaukee children know, there’s a button hidden just behind a platform in the bison hunt exhibition on the second floor. And when that switch is flipped, a rattlesnake in the exhibit will rattle its tail. No matter how tired my family has been after a full day at the museum, our trip was never complete without finding that rattlesnake button.

This is just a short list; there are so many exhibits I’m missing, like the butterflies, the rain forest and the Native American powwow scene. What are your family’s favorites? What do you need to make sure you see before the new museum opens? Email me at amy.schwabe@jrn.com to let me know what I missed.