Museum consultant thinks Brockhouse collection will be in good hands
SIOUX FALLS, SD (KELO) — A longtime museum consultant in Sioux Falls says the city council made the right choice in giving the Delbridge Museum's taxidermy mounts to three out-of-state non-profits, with the bulk of the collection going to the University of Notre Dame.
It's a decision that received public pushback during Tuesday's council meeting.
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But the retired director of Augustana University's archeology lab expects the collection to remain in good hands.
Adrien Hannus had a vision of how to display the animal mounts when they first moved into the Delbridge Museum in the early 1980s.
'My suggestion out of the box was build a little African hut village in the center of the entire space, fill it with vegetation that would be correct to Africa,' Hannus said.
But the museum didn't share Hannus's vision.
'The people on the board at that time, nixed that completely. They wanted water holes and so on for the animals,' Hannus said.
Hannus says the mounts of the Brockhouse collection were too rigid to form-fit into a creative display.
'You mount the animals for the exhibit, so it's mounted in a certain pose. These weren't done that way. These were animals that were taxidermied standing up, all looking right,' Hannus said.
Yet people speaking at Tuesday's city council remained unmoved in their support of keeping the animals here.
'Everywhere I go, I'm talking to people all of the time, they all say we should keep them here. They belong here. I think if you actually had a public vote, I bet 75-percent of the people would approve to stay here,' Minnehaha County Historical Society member Jim Carlson said.
Hannus thinks the University of Notre Dame's Museum of Biodiversity will be a good steward in preserving and presenting its share of the collection.
'And I'm sure that they are prepared to do work on the animals to curate them more adequately,' Hannus said.
The long saga over what to do with the Brockhouse collection comes to an end with a final vote by the city council to move them out.
'I would think that this is a very responsible thing to do,' Hannus said.
Hannus adds that providing backdrops for the exhibits can be very expensive, especially when it comes to adding artwork and any special effects for the taxidermy mounts.
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