The USU Eastern Museum is currently celebrating its anniversary and they have lots of activities taking place at the museum.  Castle Country Radio was able to sit down with Dr. Tim Riley to talk about the celebration.

“So this is the 60th anniversary, the museum opened to the public on June 3, 1961 and we had our temporary gallery, the middle upstairs of the museum, is where we have our temporary exhibits, over time we decided to do a whole retrospective on the museum there and that opened up on June 3 of this year to our museum members and then to the public on June 4,” said Dr. Riley. There is one-half of the gallery that walks guests through 60 years of the museum. You will see several different photos of the history of the museum.

“Then the other side has two components. First, there are a dozen or so cases focused on some of the significance of the museum. So we have 60 years of progress, 60 years of science. The 60 years of science we focus on some of the important archeology, paleontology, discoveries that have been contributed to by the museum,” said Dr. Riley. Guests will see original fossil bones of the Utah Raptor and see some of the research that has been done.

There is also a component that guests can leave their remarks on what the museum has meant to them. “Then our final section is 60 years of community and its where we want you to contribute your memories or your thoughts about the museum. We got a little, sort of tunnel, mimicking a portal to a mine, if you will, where you walk through and we have little dinosaur footprints cut out in black and we want you to talk a moment write down something that inspires you about the museum,” said Dr. Riley. There is also a community art contribution being featured which has several different works of art on display by local artists.

If you would like to see the exhibit of the last 60 years of the museum you can visit the museum during their regular business hours, including the late-night on Thursdays. “Its going to be Monday through Saturday is 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, with the exception of that Thursday evening and the idea with that was to give people something to do as they came down for Culture Connections every Thursday. But also just a way to have a time period outside of normal work hours where people can come down and visit the museum, and check out the displays and maybe spend some time with their kids, having fun with science,” said Dr. Tim Riley. On Thursday evenings the museum is open till 7:00 pm.

To learn more about the USU Eastern Prehistoric Museum visit their website at https://eastern.usu.edu/museum/