This spring, our most popular member event returns!
Date and Time
Friday, April 28, 2023
6:00 – 9:00 p.m.
Cost
Free members-only event; limited capacity
Sustainer-level+ members are allowed two guests not covered by your membership for free!
Reservations
This event has passed.
details
Speak with the staff, researchers, students, and volunteers that keep MPM thriving. Presentation topics include:
Ancient Woven Beauty from the Peruvian Collection - See and learn the stories of some colorful Peruvian textiles created by amazing artists who lived more than 800 years ago.
Animal Imagery in the Anthropology Collections - Animal imagery in many cultures portrays a deeper connection to the natural and spiritual worlds. See a variety of animal depictions and learn more about our cultural connections to animals throughout time and around the world.
Artifact Inspired: Learning the Exhibit Process - Sixteen UW-Milwaukee Museum Studies graduate students have chosen presentation topics inspired by their semester-long artifact research projects. Come and see their intriguing tabletop exhibits which highlight their work on label writing, object selection, and exhibit design. Their topics are:
- The Ainu and Ainu Bear
- Ancient and historic European locks
- Armadillos
- Bread stamps from around the world
- Creation and maintenance of ship sails through history in different cultures
- Creation of Native American material for non-Native consumers in boarding schools
- Evolution of voting in WI during the 19th century
- Hisataku Hijikata and his Palauan legacy
- History of Chinese silk
- Legendary animals of China
- Native American trade beads
- The Northwest Coast Potlatch
- Poisons in cosmetics
- Production and trade/selling of souvenirs by the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) to tourists
- Underwater archaeology in the Caribbean
- Western influence on Japan during the 19th and early 20th centuries
Botanical Biodiversity Birthday Bash - Come celebrate a “Happy Birthday” to a newly identified plant species from the tropics described by one of MPM’s researchers. Learn about the process of recognizing species new to science and see if any specimens in MPM’s plant collection were collected on your birthday.
Could You Work in Museum Collections: Preserve and Protect - Learn how to store objects like a collections professional! Determine the correct archival material for your object and explore the types of environmental conditions that will decide your object's fate. Will your object last another 100 years?
Could You Work in Museum Collections: Inventory Investigation - Try your hand at working with museum collections! Get the chance to handle and inspect objects, flex your detective skills, decipher old log books, and fill out an object record.
Dark Side of the Dome - Tour what goes on beyond our huge 73-foot hemisphere. See how we make our shows come to life and engage our audiences.
Increasing Access to the Museum through Virtual Tours and 3D Photogrammetric Models – Learn about the tours and models that have been created to give visitors and researchers more information beyond what is available in the exhibit labels and access to areas normally closed to the public.
Key Innovation: Unusual Typewriters from the MPM Collections - View unique, rarely seen typewriters from the collections and learn more about their history.
The Lure of Crystals - Explore how a crystal’s beauty reveals the structure of nature, from atoms to the cosmos!
The Many Homes of MPM - You've heard the news about our big move, so now come and see historic images from our previous three homes. Tour the Museum's earliest displays and discover what came before the exhibits you know and love today.
Spot the Difference - How an object is described is a very important step in preserving its story. How do you distinguish one teacup from hundreds of others? Examine some teacups from around the world to spot their similarities and differences. Then, try to write your own description and see how it compares to what others saw.
To Teach, to Show, to Blow: Historic Handkerchiefs and Bandanas - Before paper tissues, people used squares of cloth to blow their noses, wipe their brows, and keep their faces and necks tidy. But they could also be status symbols, preach moral behavior, or teach mathematical tables to children, and much more. View examples of 18th-to-20th-century handkerchiefs and bandanas from MPM's extensive global textile collections.
Watching Plants Breathe - See a demonstration of our real-time gas analyzer, and watch plants take up CO2 and emit H2O.
The Waukesha Biota: A Wonderful Window into Early Silurian Life - Organisms that lack hard parts rarely fossilize, yet such fossils abound in the Waukesha biota. This enables us to see a whole world of organisms seldom found, including unusual arthropods and primitive vertebrates.
What the Shell? - Dive into the Museum's marine malacology collection to learn about the weird and wonderful world of mollusks, gastropods, and cephalopods.
Wisconsin Statewide Community Science - The new statewide Community Science Project (CSP) strives to actively engage students and communities across the state in collecting and analyzing scientific data. Learn about Wisconsin’s diverse landscapes and how members of the public are contributing to scientific research at MPM and other partnering organizations.
The Wonder of Insect Wings - Most insects have the ability to fly, but that doesn’t mean they all fly the same way. Examine examples and models of insect wings to learn how wings have enabled these organisms to become the most diverse invertebrates on Earth!