Who: New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum
What: New What in the World? exhibit
When: February 11, 2010 – November 28, 2010
Where: New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum
Contact: (575) 522-4100
New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum Exhibit will have visitors saying ‘What in the World?’
LAS CRUCES — A new exhibit at the New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum takes visitors on a fun and informative journey through a fascinating array of unusual objects from the museum’s vast collections.
The exhibit, which opens on Feb. 11, is called “What in the World? Unusual Objects from the Museum Collections.”
The gadgets featured in the exhibit were used for a variety of tasks, and museum visitors are invited to answer the challenge to identify their uses in this interactive exhibit.
With the coming of the Industrial Revolution and the mass-production of goods beginning in the 1800s, all manner of machines and tools were developed to make life better. But today we sometimes fail to understand how people in the past got along without the indoor plumbing, electricity, automobiles, and other modern conveniences we take for granted.
In town and on the farm, many specialized tools were developed to perform particular tasks. These included not only the tractors and implements used to work the fields, but also everyday items used in the home. But the purpose of some of these items is not always obvious to modern eyes. Some have been bypassed by technology or fashion, such as vacuum-tube radios or Victorian-era collar crimpers. Other items (such as the chamber-pot) are rarely used today. But these common objects of the 19th and early 20th centuries remain as evidence of how people lived their daily lives.
As visitors view these selected items from the museum’s collection, they will have the opportunity to guess what they are, and to learn how they were originally used. Clues are given and each object is presented with a multiple choice or true-or-false question.
The exhibit will be in the museum’s Legacy Gallery through Nov. 28, 2010.
For more information, please call (575) 522-4100.
For more great things to do this month in Las Cruces, New Mexico visit the Las Cruces CVB!
