The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Pequot Museum reopening with art, roof garden this week
Springtime brings a reawakening for the world’s largest Native American museum, which largely closes to all but scholars for the winter. No, not the museum in Washington, D.C., but the local gem in eastern Connecticut.
The Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center will reopen for the season on Wednesday for a 19th season that will include a new art exhibit in its exhibition hall (opening Friday) and a 60,000-square-foot “ethnobotany gardens” terrace, officials report. The museum is open four days a week, Wednesday through Saturday.
Wednesday’s reopening once again makes the 308,000-square-foot center available to the public, with its intriguing displays about the history and homelands of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation — a group of proud people whose history is partly peaceful but often violent and occasionally horrific. The center recounts that past and smartly showcases the science, arts and natural resources of the area dating back to the Ice Age.
With paid admission to the museum ($20 but less for seniors, students and kids), you can also go up to the tower to get a nice view of rolling hills, the nearby city of Oz that is the Foxwoods Resort Casino (the largest casino in North America, celebrating its 25th anniversary). The museum space below is circular-shaped like the Pequot fort at Mystic on May 26, 1637, when English settlers and other Native American tribes set it afire and killed nearly all the men, women and children inside.
The freshly curated contemporary art exhibition opens Friday and can be seen in the 4,000-square-foot Mashantucket Gallery until Nov. 2, also included in general museum admission. Called “Without a Theme,” the immersive display features 20 vibrant, large-format installations from seven premier North American artists.
The nature program “Eyes on Owls” will take place April 15 at 1 and 3 p.m. with naturalist Marcia Wilson and photographer Mark Wilson hosting the interactive programs. The first 200 attendees under 17 are free.
As for the ethnobotany gardens area, the 60,000-square-foot terrace is a “green roof” — designed, planted and managed to utilize the usually wasted space on the building’s roof, notes a museum publicist. These gardens sit atop three levels of permanent exhibits and have been in the planning stages for two years. “Ethnobotany” explores how cultures use indigenous plants for food, medicine, religious ceremonies and materials. It places the cultivation of flowers, fibers, herbs, vegetables and other resources in the center of daily life and activity, according to a museum source. Next step in the process for this spring awakening: getting those gardens to bloom.