Kalamazoo Valley Museum
Encyclopedia
The Kalamazoo Valley Museum is a "hands-on" museum
located in Kalamazoo, Michigan
. The museum is largely aimed at families, and focuses on science, technology, and history. The museum is operated by Kalamazoo Valley Community College
, and admission to the facility is free.
The Museum’s collection dates to an 1881 gift to the Kalamazoo School Board of corals, shells, and rocks from Horace M. Peck, a local banker. In its early years, the Museum acquired natural history specimens, ethnographic materials, and antiquities. Currently, the collection includes over 50,000 items.
The museum has a state-of-the-art, 109-seat planetarium
that screens a variety of presentations and programs for school groups and other public audiences.
The Challenger Learning Center, one of several dozen in the country, is designed to offer hands-on and fun learning that complements middle- and high-school science and math curricula.
The museum, whose special exhibitions galleries feature an ever-changing variety of traveling exhibits, also features several permanent exhibits. These include:
Museum
A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...
located in Kalamazoo, Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
. The museum is largely aimed at families, and focuses on science, technology, and history. The museum is operated by Kalamazoo Valley Community College
Kalamazoo Valley Community College
-History:The community college district was established by voters in 1966, enrolled its first students in the fall of 1968, and currently enrolls more than 13,500 students. With the selection of Marilyn J...
, and admission to the facility is free.
The Museum’s collection dates to an 1881 gift to the Kalamazoo School Board of corals, shells, and rocks from Horace M. Peck, a local banker. In its early years, the Museum acquired natural history specimens, ethnographic materials, and antiquities. Currently, the collection includes over 50,000 items.
The museum has a state-of-the-art, 109-seat planetarium
Planetarium
A planetarium is a theatre built primarily for presenting educational and entertaining shows about astronomy and the night sky, or for training in celestial navigation...
that screens a variety of presentations and programs for school groups and other public audiences.
The Challenger Learning Center, one of several dozen in the country, is designed to offer hands-on and fun learning that complements middle- and high-school science and math curricula.
Exhibits
- The Mystery of the Mummy: Centered on a 2,300-year-old Egyptian mummyMummyA mummy is a body, human or animal, whose skin and organs have been preserved by either intentional or incidental exposure to chemicals, extreme coldness , very low humidity, or lack of air when bodies are submerged in bogs, so that the recovered body will not decay further if kept in cool and dry...
donated to the museum in 1928, the exhibit also features the results of carbon dating, CT-scans, X-rays, and forensic reconstruction done on the mummy. This exhibit also includes artifacts from the museum’s ancient Egyptian collection. - Science in Motion: The hands-on exhibits in this gallery's three sections, Energy, Human Body, and Technology, invite visitors of all ages to participate in science by seeing, touching, feeling, hearing, and discovering.
- On the Trail of History: The history and heritage of the city of Kalamazoo.
- Kalamazoo Direct To You: Kalamazoo products, including Gibson guitars, Kalamazoo stoves, Upjohn pharmaceuticals, Stryker orthopedic equipment and many more.