The Friends of the Madeline Island Museum Look Ahead to Next Season
From an Island Gazette Article By Linda Mack
It is going to be an exciting year for the Madeline Island Museum!
The stockade fence was removed in September, 2023.
Now that the stockade fence has been removed, there is an opportunity to make the museum’s exterior space more welcoming. The Wisconsin Historical Society will be planning that space in the upcoming year and the Friends of the Madeline Island Museum will be helping to engage the community in that process.
(The Friends organization was recently formed to promote and support the museum and to act as a community voice with the Wisconsin Historical Society, which owns and operates it.)
Look for more information after the first of the year. I think many of us are excited about the possibility of an attractive outdoor community space.
Red Cliff Tribal Chair Nicole Boyd speaking at the dedication of the new historic marker at the Madeline Island Museum while Bad River Tribal Chair Mike Wiggins Jr., Wisconsin Historical Society Executive Director Christian Overland and museum historian Rob Goslin look on.
On Saturday, September 30 a new historic marker describing the Ojibwe migration story was dedicated at the museum. This year the Wisconsin Historical Society will be developing a second historic marker to cover other aspects of the island’s history. Feel free to share your ideas by clicking here to fill out a form which will go to Janet Seymour, WHS Director of Outreach.
This last summer the Friends started holding informal gatherings in island homes in which our members talked about topics of historical interest. Hugh Madson described his experience on Sand Island, which dates back to 1939, and Sid Levitsky described his work with the Puritan Society in Boston, which focuses on the first contact between Native Americans and the Puritans. We plan to hold several Zoom sessions over the winter (How about the history of tennis on the island?) and will host more on the island next summer.
The Friends will also support talks on local history at the museum this coming summer, as well as continuing our support for the museum’s popular school visit programs. And we are looking forward to the very exciting new exhibit, “Passages,” that museum site director Keldi Merton is developing.
We hope you will join the Friends if you haven’t already; click here to join. Just in our second year, we have 135 members!
Linda Mack is President of the Friends of the Madeline Island Museum, a 501c non-profit.