It is safe to estimate that the Morrison County Historical Society owns thousands of three-dimensional artifacts, documents, photos, and books in its collection, all generously donated by people who care about the history of Morrison County, Minnesota.
When you visit The Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Memorial Museum, home of MCHS in Little Falls, MN, you’ll quickly realize that we don’t have all of these items on display. And why not? If all of it were on display at once, the visual clutter would be overwhelming and it would be difficult to tell a cohesive story with the jumble of artifacts. Aside from that, it’s not good for collections items to be continually on display. Light, dust, and other environmental factors work to deteriorate artifacts, sometimes at an alarmingly fast rate.
The majority of MCHS’s collections are kept in climate-controlled rooms in special archival boxes that help preserve them for the long term. Just because an item is not on display does not mean it has no value or that it will never be used. Artifacts serve a variety of educational purposes within the museum. They can …
- Be used by researchers to study a wide range of topics (even the three-dimensional artifacts can be used for this)
- Be used for special short-term exhibits
- Be visited by donors and their relatives
- Appear in the MCHS newsletter, on the website, or in other MCHS publications and digital presentations
- Be used as teaching tools during museum classes
- Enlighten researchers and museum staff through comparisons to other items in the collection
It is the conglomeration of the entire collection that provides the most complete view of the history of Morrison County. And the collection continues to grow.
The Exhibits section of the Morrison County Historical Society’s website is an attempt to put more of our vast collection on display. To view the exhibits, click on the Pages links above (under the header) or in the right sidebar.
Wow, This is a WONDERFUL idea. Thank you for beginning the next generation of how the internet can be useful to future researchers. COOOL! 😀
Thanks so much, Marlys! We’re glad you like it. 🙂
This is a very good site! I’m using it to help with a school project, and its’ very well written and easy to use! Thanks! It helps me well and its good for teens to use!
Concerning the artist Wes Sod: My father (Robert Smart, deceased) was in the army, in Italy with Wes Sod. They were good friends and while I was still living at home as a child we would get a hand made Christmas card from Wes. I recently thought of Wes again and found this website. I started looking through some memorabilia and found a picture of Wes, my father and other army buddies taken in a restaurant in New York City. On the back side of the folder that this picture is in is a character sketch of man wearing a army helmet.
If you would be interested in this or would want a just jpeg copy please feel free to contact me. Thank you, Kent