Teacher Galleries: Opening the Vault: Unearthing Hidden Stories of the Grand Rapids Public Museum

The Grand Rapids Public Museum has over 250,000 artifacts in its collections. These artifacts have been donated by community members since 1854. Only 5% of the total collection is on display at the Museum.  In an effort to make the collection accessible to the public the Museum has been working to add photos and descriptions of these artifacts into an online database. In the freshman year of Museum School students will contribute to this work by selecting an artifact of which they are interested and researching the object from multiple perspectives and using diverse lenses. They are unearthing the hidden stories that artifacts carry.