The Historical Museum at Fort Missoula, in Missoula, Montana, has a room display called What is a Museum which explains what museums do.
According to the display:
“Humans have a long history of preserving objects from their past. The ancient Greeks coined the term mouseion around 280 BCE, when they built the first temple for ‘the muses,’ a group of goddesses who kept watch over the arts and sciences. The Greeks filled their temples with sculpture and art representing the wonders of human achievement.”
In Europe and America prior to the twentieth century, museums were “cabinets of curiosities” in which wealthy gentlemen and others displays the natural, ethnic, and historical oddities which they had collected. Some of these displays allowed limited access by the general pubic.
During the twentieth century, museums shifted from being “cabinets of curiosities” to institutions of education, entertainment, and communication. At the present time there are more than 17,000 museums in the United States.
While some museums display only items which can be classified as “fine art” (paintings, sculpture, and other items often associated with an intellectual elite), other museums contain displays of everyday objects highlighting the lives of the majority of the people. The Historical Museum at Fort Missoula has about 40,000 items in its collection which means that less than 2% are on display at any one time. According to the display:
“These items all represent Missoula County in numerous ways, from objects owned by the town’s founding fathers, to everyday objects like teapots and bowling balls that represent the culture and history of Missoula.”
Shown below are some of the displays of everyday objects.
While not usually considered “fine art,” wartime propaganda posters, such as the one shown above, can provide insights into this era.
While objects such as the one shown above were common in the 1950s, for many people in the twenty-first century the use of this object baffles many people. It is a permanent wave hair dryer and, in this display, illustrates the importance of having readable labels near the object displayed so that museum goers can understand it.
This display shows the importance of ascension numbers for tracking the museum’s artifacts. It is important that the number is removable.
The display shown above focuses on the storage of textiles.
Ordinary looking artifacts, such as the chair shown above, may have interesting stories. This chair belonged to a nineteenth century lawyer who gave advise to a young lawyer. This young lawyer, Abraham Lincoln, went on to become President of the United States. The chair is now displayed as a chair once used by Abraham Lincoln.
Shown above are some of the artifacts donated to the museum by Macy’s when they closed their downtown Missoula store.
Shown above is an interactive What is It? display.
Most of the small western museums contain at least one example of a western-style cattle working saddle.
Shown above are some recent donations to the museum.
Museums 101
Museums 101 is a series of photo tours of various museum displays. Also from this series:
Museums 101: The Weekly Newspaper (Photo Diary)
Museums 101: Korean Maps (Photo Diary)
Museums 101: The Nevada City Homestead Cabins (Photo Diary)
Museums 101: Saddles (Photo Diary)
Museums 101: Under the Arctic (Photo Diary)
Museums 101: The Presby House Bedroom and Bathroom (Photo Diary)
Museums 101: The Fort Steele Drug Store (Photo Diary)
Museums 101: The Fort Dalles Museum (Photo Diary)