History Museum at the Castle prepares to receive Weis Earth Science Museum collection

APPLETON (WLUK) — A massive space at the History Museum at the Castle in Appleton sits empty, awaiting the final step for the Weis Earth Science Museum collection to be brought into its ownership.

“Finalize the contracts, and then begin the transition process of actually transitioning those pieces to the museum,” Executive Director Dustin Mack said. “We’ll focus on doing the exhibit first, so the things that the public is used to seeing that is on display will be the first things that are moved here to the history museum.”

The History Museum will be in charge of cataloguing and processing the Weis’ collections, which is much more than just what’s on display.

The Weis has many sensitive specimens in the back offices, which collections manager Kai Sipp said could make transportation tricky.

“Stuff that, if it’s not properly handled, could break rather easily,” Sipp explained. “We also have materials that are toxic if you touch it with your bare hands, stuff that is radioactive, which is not great.”

Weis Curator Don Mikulic said the museum hasn’t seen any plans for cataloguing and transport quite yet.

“The people involved don’t know what they’re getting into. Usually, you want to have everything organized and catalogued before you want to try and move things. Moves are always dangerous. There’s always things that, you lose information, you break things,” Mikulic said.

The History Museum at the Castle plans to open the exhibit by the end of summer — but Mack told us it’s not a race.

“It will take a couple of months to actually wrap our hands around, ‘Okay, how do you move the exhibits there?’ And take our time to make sure that we do that right,” Mack said.

Two things need to happen before the sale is complete. The resolution will need to be approved by the UW-Oshkosh chancellor and the Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents — but both are expected to go through.

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