Kathy Brown is a museum associate and business manager for the Carnegie Museum of Montgomery County. She contributed this week’s Preview Shelf column for the Crawfordsville District Public Library.
The Carnegie Museum of Montgomery County celebrated its 10-year anniversary this summer. A division of the Crawfordsville District Public Library, the museum is housed in Indiana’s first Carnegie Library building. The building opened in July 1902 and served as the library for more than 100 years. In the fall of 2005, after the new library opened across the street, renovations began on the old building, turning it into a museum dedicated to our county’s history, culture, art and science.
Many changes took place while the building was being renovated. The Herman-Davis building addition next door was demolished (the lot is now the Chase Bank parking lot); stairs were added back onto the front of the Carnegie; the original vaulted ceiling was exposed upstairs and a new drop ceiling was installed downstairs; new heating, cooling, windows and accessible restrooms were all installed; and a new entrance lobby was constructed.
After 18 months of planning and renovations, the Carnegie Museum was dedicated in a ribbon-cutting ceremony on June 9, 2007.
In June 2007, we had high hopes for the future of the museum. And now, 10 years later, we have realized those hopes and many more. Over the last 10 years, the Carnegie Museum has:
• Hosted three national traveling exhibits, 10 state traveling exhibits and more than 20 locally-curated exhibits
• Grown from 1,300 visitors in 2007 to over 6,400 visitors in 2016
• Increased our membership count to 282 active members
• Been awarded the 2008 Award of Merit for our Middle School Curator Project by the American Association for State and Local History
• Been awarded the 2015 Outstanding Historical Organization Award by the Indiana Historical Society, and
• Become part of the ASTC Passport Program, which allows museum members to gain free admission to over 300 science centers and museums around the world.
While the exhibits in the Carnegie Museum focus on our county’s history, we also appeal to guests outside our local area. While approximately 71 percent of our guests live in Montgomery County, an additional 14 percent are from elsewhere in Indiana, 12 percent visit from out of state and 1 percent visit from other countries. We consistently hear positive feedback from our visitors, and we’re proud to promote Montgomery County to our out-of-town guests.
If you would like to support our efforts to preserve our county’s history, we encourage you to become a member of the Friends of the Carnegie. Members receive a 10 percent discount on many items in our gift shop, our quarterly newsletter and special invitations to our events. Members also gain access to the Association of Science & Technology Centers Passport Program.
With the Passport Program, our members are able to gain free admission to more than 300 participating science centers and museums around the world. The program applies to participating centers outside a 90-mile radius of Crawfordsville (and your residence, if you are not local), but there are many wonderful facilities within a day’s drive (including the Field Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago) and even more to explore as you venture further away. You can download a list of participating programs at the ASTC website: http://astc.org/passport/.
To become a member of the Friends of the Carnegie, you can visit the museum, call us at 765-362-4618, or go to our website: www.cdpl.lib.in.us/services/carnegie. We are open year-round, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. We’d love to have you visit us.
