Quad Cities – The Quad Cities Convention & Visitors Bureau (QCCVB) and area museums will hold their second annual Quad Cities Museum Week on June 18-26, 2016. Due to the overwhelming success of last year’s event, participating museums and the QCCVB decided to make this an annual event for visitors and residents.
A total of 18 museums are participating in this year’s event. Museums will welcome visitors for a week long adventure of fun activities, great discoveries, exploration, and even geocaching. Information on participating museums, their events, and the geocache can be found at www.qcmuseumweek.com.
This year’s theme will be museum mysteries and little known facts. Each museum will feature a mystery about something in their collection or about the building that houses the museum. The Museum Week website provides information on the mysteries that will be featured at each museum.
The mystery theme of this year’s QC Museum Week has even caught the attention of the host of the Travel Channel’s successful television series “Mysteries at the Museum”, Don Wildman. Premiering its 11th season at the end of June, Wildman takes viewers around the globe to discover the fascinating tales behind the world’s hidden treasures.
Wildman will be in the Quad Cities during a portion of QC Museum Week at the Putnam Museum. An exclusive Meet & Greet evening event with Wildman will take place on Friday, June 17 from 5 - 8 p.m. on the Putnam museum’s balcony. The event will include heavy hors d’ourves and a cash bar. The public can purchase tickets for this event for $50 at http://bit.ly/1WggMd5.
In addition, Wildman will hold an autograph session between 1 – 4 p.m. Saturday, June 18. Timed visit entry tickets to The Discovery of King Tut exhibit at the Putnam between 1 and 4 p.m. are required to access the autograph signing. Tickets can be purchased at the box office, online at www.tutnam.org or by calling (563) 324-1933. Admission price includes a special audio tour, which enhances the exhibition experience
“From tunnel tours, the Wizard of Oz and King Tut, to amazing works of art, antique trucks, and stories about our area’s history, the experiences are going to be plentiful during Museum Week,” says Charlotte Doehler-Morrison, VP Marketing & Communications, QCCVB. “Enjoy this celebration of our region’s museums and participate in the special activities, exhibits and promotions that each museum has put together for the special week. It’s a great opportunity to spend a day with friends and family, and each museum features its own theme, history, galleries, and exhibits. Plus, the mysteries they highlight will add to the experience.”
Beyond all the fun exhibits and events going on during Quad Cities Museum Week, there will also be a Geocache for everyone to enjoy! Geocaching is a treasure hunt that can be as fun for the hider as it is for the seeker. Any given treasure, known as a geocache, has specific coordinates of longitude and latitude to which seekers must travel in order to locate the treasure. Geocaching is an outdoor recreational activity, in which participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or GPS-enabled smartphone and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called "geocaches" or "caches", anywhere in the world.
“By finding some or all of the Quad City Museum caches you will learn about the many great museums in the community,” says Gretchen Small of the Butterworth and Deere-Wiman House. “A total of 12 museums are participating in the Geocache.”
Participating museums in the Geocache include the Buffalo Bill Cody Homestead, Buffalo Bill Museum, Butterworth Center, Dan Nagle Walnut Grove Pioneer Village, Deere-Wiman House, Family Museum, Figge Art Museum, German American Heritage Museum, Iowa 80 Trucking Museum, Putnam Museum, and Rock Island County Historical Society.
Museum Week was created through a collaboration between area museums and the QCCVB. The event is designed to showcase the wealth of museums in the Quad Cities region and to create greater awareness about each museum’s offerings. Last year, Museum Week generated anywhere from a 5% to 50% increase in museum attendance during the event.
Participating Museums include the following listed below. While some mysteries are ongoing throughout QC Museum Week, other mysteries are featured with special programming and are date specific. Be sure to check website for details.
- Afro-American Heritage Center – Mystery - Mate Masie
- Augustana Teaching Museum of Art (ATMA) - Mystery - painting and collections tour (date specific)
- Buffalo Bill Museum – Mystery - Lone Star Steamer Paddle Wheel Boat
- Buffalo Bill Cody Homestead – Mystery - museum item search and identification
- Butterworth Center & Deere-Wiman House – Mystery - tunnel tour and items in the homes (date specific)
- Catich Gallery – Mystery - painting
- Col. Davenport House – Mystery - murder of Colonel Davenport
- Dan Nagle Walnut Grove Pioneer Village – Mystery - who is buried at the Walnut Grove Cemetery
- Davenport School Museum – Mystery - scavenger hunt and identify a secret item
- Family Museum - Mystery – follow clues throughout the museum
- Figge Art Museum – Mystery – presentation on “Demystifying the Mystery of Art Appraising” (date specific)
- German American Heritage Center – Mystery – What Quad Cities families made it big in the Wild West and more
- Hauberg Indian Museum at Black Hawk State Historic Site – Mystery – identify the animals in the museum
- Iowa 80 Trucking Museum – Mystery – discover mysterious stories relating to some of the tracks, scavenger hunt and more.
- Karpeles Manuscript Museum – Mystery – historical documents and manuscripts from Charles Dickens and the tale of his son that died and is buried in the Quad Cities
- Palmer Family and Chiropractic History Museum – Mystery – identify the artifact
- Putnam Museum & Science Center – Mystery – Egyptian themed mysteries and host of “Mysteries at the Museum” television show (date specific)
- Rock Island County Historical Society – Mystery – a never seen part of Rock Island County on exhibit and mystery of the two jackets.
For more information on the geocache and Quad Cities Museum Week, go to www.qcmuseumweek.com. The website includes geocache information, museum events and listings, and a downloadable brochure. The brochure is printable and lists all the events, museum locations, and a map. Museums and the QCCVB encourage people to post about their Museum Week experiences on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram by using the hashtag #QCMUSEUMWEEK.
(submitted by Charlotte Doehler-Morrison)
