Public Museum Begins Removing Exhibits Next Week

Milwaukee Public Museum. Photo taken March 8th, 2017 by Jeramey Jannene.

Fans of the Milwaukee Public Museum have just a few days to see it in all its current glory.

The Asia Gallery on the third floor and the Pre-Columbian Mezzanine above the third floor will both close Monday as the museum enters a new stage of preparing its collections for moving to the new museum being built at the corner of N. 6th Street and W. McKinley Avenue. They are the first of galleries to close as the museum packs up for its new home.

The Asia Gallery will be closed temporarily to serve as a staging area for packing museum exhibits and items. The museum will start deinstalling a few hundred items on exhibit throughout the museum, according to an update from MPM released Friday.

The Pre-Columbian Mezzanine containing pottery and metal objects from pre-colonial Central and South America and the Caribbean will be permanently closed after Monday, as the exhibit is deinstalled. Several of the items in the exhibit will be on display in the new exhibition gallery called “Living in a Dynamic World” at the future museum, which is expected to open in 2027.

The mezzanine is the least trafficked part of the current museum. However, MPM is setting up a “virtual tour” of both exhibits.

MPM doesn’t know yet when it will reopen the Asia Gallery.

“During this first round of object deinstallation, we will gain crucial information that will improve future processes and help us better determine timelines for other exhibit closures,” the museum said. “This will ensure that our guests have advanced notice so they can visit other cherished exhibits in the current museum before the new museum opens in 2027.”

The museum is already about four years into the moving process. Staff began an inventory of the approximately 4 million items in the museum’s collections in 2021. It’s expected the move will take until 2028 to complete.

Not all of the museum’s collections and exhibits will go to the new museum. Some will be moved to an off-site storage facility. And some exhibits, like the Streets of Old Milwaukee, will not be making the move at all.

“More temporary gallery and exhibit closures are expected throughout the next year and a half as the Museum continues to pack its 4 million collections items,” MPM said. “The temporary closures will be staggered and limited to specific areas in the Museum to reduce the impact on the public and ensure visitors still have an enjoyable Museum experience throughout our three floors of exhibits.”