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Montana Natural History Museum on the move and it’s having a party!

Natural History Center http://www.montananaturalist.org lands at new roost near McCormick Park in Missoula

It was only 18 months ago that Susan Estep, president of the board of directors of the Montana Natural History Center, told the other board members: “We have a dream to buy a building.”

By Daryl Gadbow

This week the dream becomes reality, as the nonprofit Missoula educational organization moves from its longtime Nature Center headquarters at Fort Missoula into a new, much larger and more accessible facility near McCormick Park.

And it was only 18 months ago that the former Big Sky Brewing Co. building at 120 Hickory St. was only a shell, and as Estep describes it, “a hole in the ground.”

Now the interior of the building has been transformed with spacious rooms with brightly painted walls, which are rapidly being filled with everything the Montana Natural History Center’s staff and board of directors dreamed of putting in it.

The new facility will house a natural history museum, library, community multipurpose rooms, a children’s playroom, a gift shop and the organization’s administrative offices.

“We’re just amazed we got it done,” said Estep. “It’s so exciting. And this is the best part: We have real bathrooms.”

The group’s new museum will officially be open next Monday, with some exhibits in place, according to Betsy Maier, director of development for MNHC.

But everyone is invited to a “sneak preview” of the facility, and a celebration of the move, along with a fundraising event called “Other People’s Art Sale” on April 1.

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“Other People’s Art Sale”

Friday, April 1, 2005

5 – 9:00 p.m.

Montana Natural History Center 120 Hickory St. Missoula

On Friday, April 1, everyone is invited to a fund-raising event for the Montana Natural History Center and a sneak preview of its new museum and headquarters at 120 Hickory St. The event will feature a sale of donated art to raise funds for the Natural History Center’s education programs.

The sale will be from 7:30 to 9:00 p.m. Food and beverages will be available for purchase. There will be dancing to music by the Sam Riddle Trio. The MNHC’s nature bus will provide transportation from Higgins Avenue, near the Catalyst. For more information or to donate artwork, call 327-0405 or visit the web site http://www.montananaturalist.org

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“People can come in and see what we’ve done,” said Maier. “A lot of people haven’t seen the building.”

Among the exhibits visitors will be able to see when the facility opens will be two mounted bison from the William Hornaday expedition to Montana in 1886 to collect specimens for the Smithsonian Institute. Only a few small bands of surviving bison were located. The mounts, along with a grizzly and black bear, are being provided by the University of Montana, which as an extensive collection of zoological specimens warehoused with no place to display them to the public, according to Brad Robinson, MNHC executive director.

The new museum will be able to give people a chance to see those treasures, Robinson said. The Natural History Center plans to display many of the UM’s zoological specimens on a rotating, seasonal basis, he said.

The MNHC’s library will have 5,000 to 6,000 natural history and nature guide books available for teachers to take to their classrooms, and for on-site use by the public, according to Maier.

A centerpiece of the museum will be an exhibit on Glacial Lake Missoula.

Since 1990, the Montana Natural History Center has been dedicated to the mission of “fostering understanding, appreciation, and conservation of natural systems through natural systems through natural history education in the northern Rocky Mountain region.” The organization’s keystone program is the Visiting Naturalist in the Schools, which provides 6,500 hours of instruction based on inherent student inquisitiveness about nature.

The group’s new downtown facility is envisioned as a “base camp” from which to learn more on their own, or in field programs offered by MNHC.

The new museum will feature a combination of permanent exhibits augmented by a variety of traveling or revolving exhibits from a variety of sources.

Most of the exhibits eventually will be interactive, according to Maier.

When visitors come to the MNHC facility when it opens, she said, they will find large pieces of paper taped to the walls of the rooms where people can write down the kinds of things they’d like to see there.

The move into the new facility will give the Montana Natural History Center 5,574 square feet of space, compared to 1,850 square feet it had at its cramped quarters at Fort Missoula.

In the future, the organization hopes to be able to remodel and move into an additional 4,000 square feet of space in the new building, Robinson said.

“We’re really excited being next to Missoula Parks and Recreation and McCormick Park,” Maier said.

“And Osprey games,” added Robinson

Reporter Daryl Gadbow can be reached at 523-5264 or at [email protected]

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