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The Milwaukee Public Museum front entrance In 2022, Milwaukee County relied on a document labeled a “Due Diligence” report to justify a major, irreversible decision: vacating the current Milwaukee Public Museum building and proceeding with construction of a new facility. In public governance, due diligence  has a clear meaning. It requires a full and honest evaluation of assets, risks, and obligations —especially when public property, public funds, and irreplaceable cultural

The Documented Value of the Museum Assets Being Left Behind In Part 1, we asked a simple question: If the Milwaukee Public Museum is leaving an aging building behind, why is it also leaving behind the historic environments inside it? In Part 2, we address the claim most often used to justify that decision — the idea that these dioramas and murals are “obsolete,” “low value,” or too costly to preserve. The documented record points in a very different direction — and as move pl

Why Milwaukee’s Museum Move Is Putting Irreplaceable Public Heritage at Risk For more than a century, the Milwaukee Public Museum has belonged to the people of Milwaukee. Not just as a building. Not just as a brand. But as a shared civic inheritance — one shaped by generations of artists, scientists, craftspeople, educators, and public investment. As the Museum prepares to leave its longtime home and move into a new facility, most attention has been placed on what is wrong wi

This post is not about exhibits, nostalgia, or museum design. It exists to document what appears in public records related to the Milwaukee Public Museum — and to clearly identify where the public record does not  yet provide answers. The museum itself is not the subject of this issue. The museum is the evidence. For more than a decade, the nonprofit operator of the Milwaukee Public Museum made sworn statements to the federal government regarding ownership of museum assets. I

In the history of American natural history museums, few stories carry more irony—or heartbreak—than the divergent paths of the Chicago Field Museum and the Milwaukee Public Museum, two Midwestern institutions born within a decade of each other and shaped, in their earliest days, by the same taxidermy genius: Carl Ethan Akeley. Akeley arrived in Milwaukee in 1886 as a young, ambitious taxidermist hired by the Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM), then barely a decade old. During his

Courtesy of the University of Minnesota and Bell Museum  A massive taxidermied moose is hoisted by crane, wrapped and secured for transport to the new Bell Museum. When the Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM) insists that its large, historic habitat dioramas cannot be moved safely into the new Wisconsin Museum of Nature & Culture, it is worth looking north to a museum that has already done exactly that. In 2017–2018, the Bell Museum in St. Paul, Minnesota relocated ten full-size na

For nearly a century, the Milwaukee Public Museum was known around the world for its “Milwaukee Style” dioramas — intricate, hand-crafted habitats that married science and art in perfect balance. Built from the 1930s through the 1990s, these exhibits weren’t just displays; they were immersive, truthful reconstructions of real ecosystems, shaped by field data, taxidermy artistry, and painterly depth. Each one served as both a teaching tool and a love letter to the natural worl

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Title: The Final Act: How the Milwaukee Public Museum’s “Disposition Plan” Removes the Public from Its Own Museum Milwaukee, WI — October 31 st 2025 For years, MPM, the private nonprofit hired to manage our Milwaukee Public Museum has orchestrated a series of administrative maneuvers culminating in the  Plan for Disposition of the Milwaukee Public Museum’s Surplus Personal Property and Milwaukee County Fixtures  (File No. 25-586 ), released in late 2025

Who decides what parts of our shared story are worth saving? The Milwaukee Public Museum has been a place of wonder for generations — where children met lions, where families wandered cobblestone streets, and where time stood still in the warm glow of The Streets of Old Milwaukee  or the twilight of the European Village . For over a century, these immersive environments have been more than displays; they are cultural landmarks, repositories of memory, and quiet teachers of hi

Source: “The Role of Digital Engagement in Museums,” MuseumNext, October 25, 2024. When museums embrace technology, the goal should be to connect people more deeply to history—not to disconnect them from it. Across the world, digital engagement is redefining what it means to be “modern.” From virtual tours to augmented reality experiences, museums are finding new ways to open their doors wider—using technology to make culture more accessible, inclusive, and connected to the p

Milwaukee Public Museum. (n.d.). Milwaukee Revealed . In Future Exhibits . Retrieved October 2025, from https://www.mpm.edu/future/exhibits/milwaukee-revealed For decades, the Milwaukee Public Museum has been our city’s time capsule — a place where generations walked through the Streets of Old Milwaukee, visited the European Village, and marveled at handcrafted WPA-era dioramas that told our story. We were told the museum was moving. But the truth is, it’s being rebuilt from

PreserveMKE respectfully requests that the Wisconsin State Legislature re-examination the state’s funding commitment and level of involvement and oversight for the new Milwaukee Museum projects. We understand that the new museum is being built. We are not suggesting a stop to that project. PreserveMKE’s focus is primarily on the preservation of the current Milwaukee Public Museum. We don’t believe the public’s views were properly represented when the votes were cast to fund t

Walk past a classic bison scene and you’ll notice something: today’s museum pros don’t see a dusty relic—they see a layered story worth...

Photo Credit: Milwaukee Public Museum / via WUWM 89.7 FM  – “The future of Milwaukee Public Museum’s A Tribute To Survival  exhibit,” May...

Photo Courtesy of https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Milwaukee_Public_Museum_January_2023_37_%28Asia--Orangutan%29.jpg Carl Akeley’s...

Photo Courtesy of: American Antiquity, “Stephan F. de Borhegyi, 1921–1969,” Vol. 34, No. 3 (1969), Cambridge University Press. Read...

The History and Future of the Once-Revolutionary Taxidermy Diorama Once hailed as cutting-edge science, taxidermy dioramas were the...

https://www.mpm.edu/node/27094 Preserving Milwaukee’s WPA Legacy at the Public Museum Milwaukee has a unique place in American history....

Milwaukee is home to something extraordinary — one of the world’s largest open-air diorama.  For generations, these exhibits have not...

Source: Milwaukee County Legistar – Parks & Culture Committee, Sept. 2, 2025 (Video available at: milwaukeecounty.legistar.com , File ID...