Successful year for Galt Museum
IT WAS A YEAR OF CELEBRATION, CITY COUNCIL TOLD
The Galt Museum and Archives experienced a successful year of growth in 2017.
City council was provided with an annual update from The Galt during council’s regular meeting on Monday. Susan Burrows-Johnson, CEO and executive director for the Galt Museum and Archives, said 2017 was a year of celebration.
“I think it was a terrific year,” she said.
Some of those celebrations included events for Canada’s sesquicentennial, the 50th anniversary of Fort Whoop-Up, First Nations of Japan, and the 50th anniversary of the twinning of St. Laurent and Lethbridge.
She also noted the importance of the startup of the Indigenous History program at the museum.
“Working with our Blackfoot colleagues in the community help people understand the real history of the area with the Blackfoot people before contact, what happened and moving forward in time,” Burrows-Johnson said.
The unveiling of the Galt statue on the museum grounds was a culmination of years of work. And the staff at the museum continue to work to bring history to life for local residents.
“The programming and the staff are very creative,” said Burrows-Johnson. “They continue to find interesting ways for people to understand local history.”
Discovery Hall saw the addition of artifacts and interpretive material for the Chinese restaurant and Lethbridge Herald exhibits.
Two major components were added to the exterior exhibits south of the museum, including a large irrigation diorama featuring a working hand pump and a “coal wall” incorporating a mine entrance and stratigraphic layers embedded with fossil casts. There were numerous temporary exhibits throughout the year as well as planning for exhibits moving into the future.
There were 42 collections offers, 131 items donated, 127 Archives donations, and 708 Archives requests in 2017.
The Archives department contains more than one million documents relating to the history and culture of Lethbridge and southern Alberta.
The department has continued to explore new ways to share that information with local residents, including through social and local media.
Fort Whoop-Up offered a full season of interpretation in 2017. The season moved from 12 to 17 weeks and saw a 66 per cent increase in visitors to 8,245. The average length of stay for those visits was about two hours, and 3,462 daily wagon rides were given.
Education programming included 420 programs provided to 10,656 students and 1,357 adults totallying 12,013 participants.
Education programs are supported by the Friends of the Galt Museum and Archives, who sponsored 330 buses to bring students to the museum.
In terms of volunteers, the Galt is dependent on the work of volunteers for much of its preparation, programming, and maintenance.
This year, the Galt saw 270 volunteers supply 9,383 hours valued at $225,192.
In all, The Galt saw 47,088 visitors on-site, including 24,015 from schools and community groups.