First exhibit item moved into the Nature & Culture Museum of Wisconsin

On March 27, a 20-foot-long canoe that had been on display at Milwaukee Public Museum for 30 years became the first exhibit component to enter the new museum building. The boat will eventually be on display in the global landscapes gallery called Living in a Dynamic World.

Moving the boat inside was no small feat. Because of its size, the boat needed to be moved into the building before the structure was fully enclosed. Since it is too large for the elevators and too heavy to be safely carried up the stairs, crews used a crane to lift it – secured in a crate approximately 27 feet long and weighing about 2,300 pounds – through a fourth-floor window before the glass was installed.

Video of the boat being removed from exhibit at MPM, loaded onto a flatbed inside its custom crate, and lifted into the new building is HERE:

The boat is now being carefully stored inside the new building until the interior is finalized. More items will begin moving into the Nature & Culture Museum of Wisconsin toward the end of 2026.

The boat is a replica of a typical canoe carved by the Haida (hi-duh), an Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. They would have used the canoe for fishing and transportation, and the creation of these boats is still a tradition in some Haida communities today. The boat was created in 1996 by exhibit artist Craig Yanek, who constructed the object based on a model in the Museum's collections using Navy-surplus balsa wood after World War II.

More exhibit items will be brought over toward the end of 2026 and in early 2027, as interior work wraps up. The Museum is still set to open in spring of 2027.