MuseOn Kalamazoo

Even if you don't live near Kalamazoo you can still get a free dose of Kalamazoo history three times a year. The Kalamazoo Valley Museum's magazine, museOn, which is available online, can provide a little bit of your ancestors' world from people to places to past-times. The current edition includes a piece about some of the different industries that have employed Kalamazooans. You can read it here. 

Each issue has something of interest. Some recent subjects have been the history of Kalamazoo's townships, Kalamazoo during the Depression, Kalamazoo's history of windmill making, Kalamazoo and the car, Kalamazoo dressmakers and many others. Because back issues are available here on the KVM website  I encourage you to take a peek at issues past to see if they have covered a topic of particular interest to you. If you had ancestors who lived in Kalamazoo during the Civil War you may be interested to peruse the Winter/Spring 2005 issue which has a number of articles relevant to Kalamazoo life in that time period. One that was of particular interest to me lately was on page 12 of the Winter 2012 issue which had a photograph of the members of Kalamazoo's Orcutt post of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR). One of my people, Lawrence Flynn, may very well be in this photo if it was taken prior to 1917. I contacted the museum and they confirmed that the photo was, alas, undated.

One fun feature is the “What Is It” page. Three historical objects are shown and your job is to identify them if you can. Sometimes they are real stumpers.

If you live within an easy drive of Kalamazoo you should scroll to near the end of each issue to see what local history talks are coming up in their Sunday Series. Over the past few years they have had speakers discuss Kalamazoo baseball, horse racing, “The Sins of Kalamazoo-- Gambling, Saloons and Pool Halls,” Kalamazoo's musical history and many other topics. If I lived in the area I would attend many of them.

If you can remember to periodically check for new issues you can keep up to date on Kalamazoo's past.

If you want to see what else the Kalamazoo Valley Museum has to offer you can go their website or read my blog post about it.

The Kalamazoo Valley Museum

There is a little something for everyone at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum. It is part children's museum, part Kalamazoo history museum, part repository of historical artifacts. And with both permanent and temporary exhibits as well as a planetarium, it is difficult to know where to begin. If you live in the area and have a free afternoon, I recommend that you take a look. Best of all, admission is free, though the planetarium show costs $3 per person.

You may first want to visit their re-vamped website to get an overview of their offerings and to see what temporary exhibits are currently there. As of February 2012, a new exhibit just opened entitled Disease Detectives that will stay at the KVM through May 28^th. There are usually four to six temporary exhibits per year between their two galleries on the 1^st and 3^rd floors.

If you remember the mummy that used to be located in the little museum above the library, you can visit it again at the KVM and see the X-rays done on it in recent years.

Behind the public face of the KVM are scholars who are working hard to collect and make available photographs (through a collaboration with the Kalamazoo Public Library) and documents from our city's past. Through blog posts, segments of letters (from a Civil War soldier) and diary entries (from a young woman starting in 1909) are being shared with the public.

Free monthly lectures (the Sunday History Series), from September through May, are also held here on various topics, some of definite interest to those conducting research into family history, and thus Kalamazoo history.

For those of us who don't live in the area, there is still one thing that the KVM can offer us: their online magazine. Formerly entitled Museography, but just renamed museON, it is more than just an advertisement for the current exhibits in the museum. The magazine is published three times per year. In every issue there are articles relating to Kalamazoo history from prominent citizens to neighborhoods to industries in the area (like automobiles, and I mean before there was ever a GM plant in town). Better yet, all past issues are available for download through the KVM website.

The Kalamazoo Valley Museum has a lot to offer and I encourage you to take a look.