History
The Illinois State Museum was founded in 1877 as a showcase within the sixth Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, which was completed at that time. As the state's government grew, the museum collection was evicted from the Capitol and moved to the then-new Michael Howlett building, part of the Illinois Capitol Complex, in 1923.
With continued growth in Illinois's natural history collections, and the need to have a dedicated location in Springfield for tourists and school groups, the state constructed its first purpose-built state museum in 1961-63. This building is the current Illinois State Museum.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the Illinois State Museum expanded to also open four satellite museums. The Dickson Mounds Museum, near Lewistown, Illinois, specializes in the anthropology of the Native Americans of the Illinois River valley, while the museums in Chicago, Lockport, and Rend Lake largely contain rotating exhibitions of Illinois-based fine arts and crafts.
Read more about this topic: Illinois State Museum
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
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—Dudley Nichols, U.S. screenwriter. Jean Renoir. Sorel (Philip Merivale)