Museums

The last few days have been filled up with driving and the few respites we’ve had have been at a series of interesting museums. I have always loved history and learning about the past, and the past couple of days have given me a new appreciation of the settling of the American West, the gold rush and the atrocious US policies that drove the Native Americans from their lands.

It’s amazing the number of towns / counties that have small museums with high quality and interesting collections. We’ve stopped by several on this trip, and below are some of the highlights from the past few days.

First, as we were leaving Chamberlain, SD (half-way across the state, along the Missouri river that divides the farming eastern half from the more rugged / badlands / black hills western half) we saw the South Dakota Hall of Fame as we were about to get back on I90. We stopped in for a few minutes and learned about a lot of great South Dakotans (Tom Brokaw, Sparky Anderson, Tom Daschle, and numerous others including Ted Hustead, the found of Wall Drug). After the SD Hall of Fame we headed west to the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site and had a chance to teach the kids about the cold war and learn about the START treaty.

Adams Museum – Deadwood, SD
Later, we decided to go to Deadwood, SD, because I knew it had an interesting history (and was the subject of one of my favorite Nanci Griffith songs) but didn’t remember what. For those whose memory is as bad as mine, Deadwood gained notoriety as part of the lawless Dakota territories (it was an illegal white settlement in Indian territory) where Wild Bill Hickok was shot and killed. But, Deadwood also houses the Adams museum which has several great collections; everything from Dinosaur fossils and a cabinet of curiosities (see the double-headed calf, below) to a room honoring the “legends” of Deadwood such as Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickok, Potato Creek Johnny, Poker Alice Tubbs, and Deadwood Dick. We also learned a lot about the early Jewish settlers of Deadwood who helped settle the city (Deadwood even had a few Jewish mayors in the 1870s and 1880s).

Yellowstone Art Museum (YAM) – Billings, MT
Billings Montana holds the Yellowstone Art Museum (YAM). The city itself is a bit of an oasis amidst a desert and the museum is also an oasis. Housing a small permanent collection of western art, the museum had two interesting temporary exhibitions when we visited the first was objects on loan from several local collectors and the second was called “Post Secret.” Post Secret is a traveling exhibition (more details at http://www.postsecret.com/) with a few hundred of the thousands of post cards that have been sent into the Post Secret project.

The project started several years back with a simple concept – have people artistically portray a secret on a postcard and then mail it anonymously. The results are happy, sad, scary, emotionally touching and cathartic as well.

I’ve included photos of the postcards below, and strongly recommend you see the exhibit if it comes to your town (or check out the Web site).

In conjunction with the Post Secrets exhibit they had a very humorous exhibit by a Japanese-born American artist named Gen Hayashida . Hayashida stretches the limits of the US Postal Service rules on what can be mailed (and how addresses are read) by creating what I can only describe as “mailing address art” – he creates very interesting post cards and then mails them (I’m assuming that some of his more innovative creations never make it there). One of my favorites was made using parts from a computer keyboard.

Another interesting one was made from a moveable piece puzzle.

The last one I’ll include here was a ransom-note like address.

The museum’s western art was also good, although for some strange reason they had a Raoul Dufy oil painting of boats in Deauville, France hanging next to all of the western art – it was definitely one of those “one of these things is not like the others” moments.

Museum of the Rockies – Bozeman, MT
A couple of hours west of Billings, in the town of Bozeman, is the University of Montana’s Museum of the Rockies, which hosts one of the best paleontology exhibits I’ve seen. Of course, having the largest T-Rex head ever found is always going to be a crowd pleaser, but the info graphics on all of the other dinosaurs were superb and we all learned a tremendous amount.

In addition to the paleontology, the museum has great exhibits on the settling of the west and of World War II. It also has an impressive looking planetarium that was closed for the day by the time we got there -- guess we'll have to stop by again next time we're in Bozeman.

Ciao for now,
Evan

PS – I’m writing this from the wonderful public library in Idaho Falls, ID. I could probably write a whole blog about how wonderful public libraries are and how we’ve come to appreciate the free WiFi, the reference books and the good working space they provide. But, if the blog never gets written, at least I’ve acknowledged them here.