(Arnolds Park)– Museums throughout Dickinson county have formed a collaboration known as the “Lakes Area Museum Alliance”. Clay Norris, Executive Director of the Iowa Rock ‘n Roll Music Association, tells KUOO news 13 museums are involved. He says the goal is to increase visibility and attendance at all of the museums throughout the county through cross promoting them…
“My board president Ralph Kluseman was in town and we went next door to the Okoboji Foundation, I just wanted to introduce him to the folks there, and Angie Cook and Tim Kinnetz of the Spirit Of Okoboji had just left and we were talking to them about some ideas we had and it was like, funny, they had kind of the same idea and actually they had developed it a little bit further and that was that it would be wonderful to get all of the museums in the area to cooperate because they’re working on the Abby Gardner cabin and that area, and we have some further development plans for our museum and it just all sort of came together and Mary Dreier got involved from the Dickinson County Museum where she had some vision and things she wanted to get accomplished and so we all just discovered we have mutual goals to share the history of our county and our state and we, you know, surmised that all of the area museums probably shared the same goal as we did.”
Norris says an official kick off of the alliance will be held from 10:00 am until 4:00 pm on Saturday, June 10th…
“When we thought about where the museums were, we quickly realized that a great deal of them were next to our wonderful Iowa Great Lakes Dickinson County Recreational Trails system, and wouldn’t it be kind of fun to have sort of a museum crawl, you know, do it on bicycle or do it on foot, and it doesn’t have to be that way, obviously you can drive from museum to museum but have one day where all of them would be open at the same time and we would have some special events going on and so that’s what we came up with to kick the whole thing off.”
Informational brochures with a trail map will be available at each museum on Friday, June 9th and at 10:00 am Saturday, June 10th.
Norris says the alliance is planning another special activity as well…
“We’re planning to have a punch card and if you can visit 10 out of the 13 museums between June 10th and Labor Day weekend, we will enter you into a contest for a prize yet to be determined but we’re going to put something together that’s really fun, and also every one of those people that does that will get a nice packet, a nice bag, that has some articles from each museum.”
Participating museums in the Lakes Area Museum Alliance include Abbie Gardner Cabin; Arnolds Park Museum and Historic Arnolds Park; Clark Museum; Dickinson County Museum; Dickinson County Nature Center; Heritage Square Museum of Lake Park; Higgins Museum of Bank Notes; Iowa Great Lakes Maritime Museum; Iowa Rock ‘n Roll Museum and Hall of Fame; Lakeside Laboratories; Okoboji Classic Cars; Pearson Lakes Art Center; and Winchester Store Museum.
