Take a sneak peek at what the Madeline Island Museum has in store for the 2024 season.
Free and Open to the Public!
Join friends and neighbors to celebrate the beginning of the 2024 Madeline Island Museum season! Be among the first to experience the new Passages exhibit, enjoy light snacks and beverages, and learn more about this season’s programs and events.
Passages
Ojibwe Migration to the Place Where the Food Grows on the Water
Madeline Island has long been a place of courageous travelers. Learn more about the epic journeys of people through the Apostle Island archipelago and beyond. This new exhibit showcases the migration of Ojibwe people to Madeline Island, and their journey to stay.
Explore the Anishinaabe migration to Moningwanekaaning, Chief Buffalo’s 1849 journey from Madeline Island to Washington D.C. and the 1854 Treaty of La Pointe, and Eliza Morrison’s stories of travels around the Lake Superior region. Dugout and birchbark canoes, paintings by Carl Gawboy (Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe), and multi-media features create a unique opportunity to experience Madeline Island as the center of passages to and from the island over time.
The Passages exhibit is sponsored in part by the Friends of the Madeline Island Museum with a generous contribution from the Coffin Family in memory of Robert P. Coffin.
About the Location
Bella and Leo Capser opened the Madeline Island Museum in 1958. Their original collection of artifacts and texts has helped document centuries of island history, while later additions and expansions to the museum paint an even richer, deeper portrait of life on the Apostle Islands. The Ojibwe and other tribes made their home on Madeline Island, the largest of the Apostle Islands, for thousands of years before Europeans first made contact—in Ojibwe, the island is named Mooningwanekaaning-minis, which means island of the yellow-breasted woodpecker. Because of its strategic location and ample resources, the island served as a trading center for millennia and later a reliable fur trading post, missionary headquarters and commercial fishing zone for European settlers in the North American interior.
Know Before You Go & Accessibility
The museum store is open during operating hours.
Restrooms and water fountains are available on site.
The site will remain open rain or shine, except on a gale day.
No pets are allowed. Service animals are permitted.
Because of the historic nature of the buildings, not all areas are ADA accessible.
Guests with additional mobility needs are encouraged to contact the site directly at 715-747-2415 or madelineisland@wisconsinhistory.org.