The Fort Douglas Military Museum is on the move, but it’s not going far.
The facility will move its exhibits next door thanks to donations from organizations such as the Dumke foundation and Fort Douglas’ nonprofit. Beau Burgess, museum and historical collections curator, said while the process isn’t finished yet, they will continue to remain open throughout the move.
“Rather than shut the museum down, which is what most museums do when they renovate … we decided to start this thing called ‘Museum on the Move’ where we don’t shut our doors,” Burgess said. “We just organize around the public and invite the public in for this process.”
Burgess said allowing people to see them move and set up the exhibits is another kind of learning experience.
The museum has spanned two buildings, which were originally army barracks built in the 1870s, since its inception in the 1975. The lower building, where the exhibits are now housed, was their space for storage and administration functions. While the functions have reversed, the upper location will retain some objects and will house an upcoming national traveling exhibition about prisoners of war in the U.S. this fall.
The move, which will continue for about another year and a half, gives the museum a chance to change and modernize the displays.
“A traditional or old-school museum has things in cases, lots of panels on the wall and photographs — it’s a very particular kind of environment,” Burgess said. “You’ll go to a lot of newer museums now and they’re interactive or upgraded or they have varying ways of displaying and interpreting objects that aren’t just things in cases with captions.”
Among some of the novelties visitors can expect from the new museum is a rearrangement of the exhibits to tell a more coherent story, life-size dioramas to make the displayed objects more interactive and a film theatre to tell the history of Fort Douglas.
Burgess said a challenge in the renovation is maintaining the historical integrity of the buildings throughout process.
“Although there’s nostalgia for the old museum and people are kind of sad to see change,” Burgess said, “there’s just actually been a lot of excitement.”
Admission to the museum is free to the public.
@Ehmannky