Madison Shumway
Staff Writer
Home to over 700,000 objects from animal skulls to arrowheads, the Idaho Museum of Natural History needs more space.
As collections near full capacity, museum leadership pursues a decades-old dream: expanding into a new building of its own.
“We’ve outgrown the old library that we’ve been in for half a century,” said Leif Tapanila, IMNH director. “Idaho deserves its own monument to the memory of Idaho… and to not have a proper building for it, really, I think Idahoans lose something by not seeing this.”
Though the museum displays ancient artifacts, Tapanila’s vision is anything but primitive. The director, who has acted in the post for a year and a half, imagines a modern, energy-efficient space that incorporates new technologies alongside prehistoric objects.
Outside, he sees a structure that is visually appealing from the road. Within the museum, virtual reality exhibits would visualize fossils as living animals and otherwise provide context for the museum’s collections.
Last month IMNH launched an online visual collection, the Virtual Museum of Idaho, which contains artifacts that are scanned, digitized and converted into 3-D models.
“[Virtual reality], to me, is something the new museum needs to incorporate, not as an afterthought, which is the way all museums now have to deal with it, because they’ve already been built,” Tapanila said. “But here we have a new space that already has virtual reality, augmented reality in mind. And we’ve got the talent here, better than any other museum in the country to do it.”
A proposed site for a future museum building is close to Stephens Performing Arts Center, which provides advantages of being on campus and visible from the interstate. Other locations in Pocatello could work, however.
The new building, in addition to serving southeastern Idahoans, could attract travelers to Pocatello, said Tapanila.
“There’s a real economic boost that a museum like this can really draw people in,” he said. “The idea is that you can educate tourists who aren’t from the region, draw them in and showcase all that Idaho has to offer.”
The museum’s current building, completed in 1954, once housed the library. Now the IMNH shares space with the Career Center, advising and scholarship offices and other departments.
Moving to a new building isn’t a recent idea. An old museum brochure, printed in 1962, called for an expansion into “TOMORROW’S MUSEUM,” and past IMNH directors have spearheaded efforts to construct a new space.
But efforts to obtain a new site have floundered after changes in management or financial downturns, Tapanila said.
He’s determined to change that. Although plans for a new building remain mostly conceptual, groundwork is slowly being laid.
“You don’t just say ‘I want a new building’ and sprinkle some water and it happens,” Tapanila said. “It’s much more like planting a garden, and we’re at that stage of planting the seeds, of figuring out what it is that we need in terms of collection space, what we need in terms of exhibit space for the public, how to integrate that with ISU … what we need to have in place, and then identifying all the stakeholders that would be interested in moving this vision forward.”
As a first step, the museum staff hope to make it more relevant with new exhibits and events. Attendance rates remain high, and efforts to engage students draw young adults to “after dark” activities.
After visitor requests for more dinosaurs, the museum will feature a Be the Dinosaur interactive exhibit with first-person video games next to dinosaur bones. Another hands-on exhibit, Tree Houses, makes visitors more than passive observers with a forest sound dance floor and model treehouse building.
The museum’s next exhibit, Living with Fire, opens in November.
Museum leadership will continue to gain support for a new building, Tapanila said.
“I want us to be a shining beacon on the hill, so to speak, for the state,” he said. “What a boon it’s going to be for southeast Idaho to have a monument to that history.”
