Sara Olson, Author at Grand Rapids Public Museum

Celebrating Culture.

Pacific dancers at annual Ethnic Heritage Festival

GRPM’s Cultural Celebration.

In lieu of the GRPM’s annual Ethnic Heritage Festival, the GRPM has partnered with local organizations to celebrate various cultures from around the world, that can be found in West Michigan, through its annual Cultural Celebration. This year, the GRPM invites you to celebrate through a series of social media posts and virtual resources to enjoy storytelling, dance, and art from different cultures around the globe from the comfort of your home.

As a history, science and culture Museum, the GRPM celebrates all aspects of diversity in the Grand Rapids community and the broader world, through programming and by making the Collections as accessible as possible. Join the GRPM in celebrating the people of Grand Rapids who have brought unique traditions and values that have helped shape the culture of our community.

Watch Cultural Organization Videos.

Discover the rich traditions of various cultures by watching videos of captivating dance performances and listening to lively music sets. Enjoy this dance performance by the Chinese Association of West Michigan that highlights classic Chinese feminine beauty, expressed through their dresses, dance moves and umbrellas. Find more videos at grpm.org/ehf/

Dive into Cultural Resources.

Continue expanding your knowledge about culture through interactive, virtual Discovery Kits and Scavenger hunts! Perfect for all ages, these downloadable activity sheets are designed to take you on a journey to explore different aspects of culture including foodways, music and headwear.

Additionally, you can learn more about the first people who called Grand Rapids home and how they lived alongside the natural world in the Anishinabek Discovery Kit. Then, explore the GRPM’s digital Collections through a World Cultures Scavenger Hunt. to uncover the fascinating customs, beliefs and lifestyles of people from diverse cultures in our communities and around the world.

Explore Culture at the GRPM.

Journey through two special exhibits that have a primary focus on diversity and culture, Newcomers: The People of This Place which highlights the ethnic groups that have settled in the Grand Rapids area, and Anishinabek: The People of this Place which focuses on the Native American culture in the region. Both exhibits are included with general admission.

Explore culture from home! Enjoy a virtual visit to the GRPM to experience the Newcomers and Anishinabek exhibits.

Thank you to all of the GPRM’s cultural partners who provided content for the Musuem to share! Whether you’re joining the GRPM virtually or in person, there are plenty of resources available to celebrate culture every day.

Shop Local for the Holidays!

GRPM's Guide for Holiday Shopping.

The holiday season is here and searching for unique gifts for loved ones is in full effect! The GRPM’s Curiosity Shop has you covered, offering a wide selection of products related to history, science, and culture including educational science kits, books, Michigan merchandise, exhibit mementos, GRPM branded souvenirs and more.

Just as the GRPM curates our Collections, the Museum does the same when selecting local products and items that reflect on the Museum’s experience and mission to inspire curiosity. When you purchase items from the GRPM’s Curiosity Shop, you are taking a piece of the Museum home with you.

Shop from the Comfort of Your Home.

Shop online, anytime at the GRPM’s online Curiosity Shop! Curbside pickup and shipping available.

NEW Wild Connections Merchandise!

The Curiosity Shop now has Wild Connections themed puzzles, books, plushies, build-your-own animal kits and more. Grab your favorite souvenirs before they’re gone!

Museum Store Sunday.

This year, the GRPM’s Curiosity Shop is proud to highlight local businesses and artisans on Museum Store Sunday, taking place on November 29. Sponsored by the Museum Store Association, Museum Store Sunday celebrates museum stores and their ability to sustain a museum’s service to their community and public.

The Museum’s member discount will be extended to all patrons, in store and online, while members will receive an additional 10% off purchases. Shop local and support the GRPM’s exhibits and programs! Discount valid in-store and online. Exclusions apply.

The Curiosity Shop is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily; Museum admission is not required to shop. Limited capacity, masks required.

Curiosity Shop

Collecting Marine Fossils in Michigan.

Expanding the Museum’s Devonian Fossil Collection.

In August, the GRPM’s Science Curator, Dr. Cory Redman spent a weekend in the Alpena and Rogers City area collecting fossil invertebrates to expand the Museum’s science Collection. The marine fossils found in this area of Michigan are roughly 385 million years old and come from a period of time referred to as the middle Devonian. During this time, Michigan was located south of the equator at ~30°S latitude, opposed to 44°N latitude where it currently resides. The climate was subtropical and the state was covered by a shallow sea.

A diversity of animals lived within this shallow sea and the conditions allowed for many of the animals to become fossilized including: corals, sponges, snails, nautiloids, echinoderms, trilobites, brachiopods, bryozoans, sharks and fish.

1. Cladoselache – shark
2. Goldringia – nautiloid
3. Viaphacops – trilobite,
4. Hexagonaria – coral,
5. Siphonophrentis – coral,
6. Dolatocrinus – crinoid
7. Kentuckia – fish,
8. Paraspirifer – brachiopod
9. Trachypora – coral
10. Eridophyllum – coral

The Alpena and Rogers City area is well-known for fossil collecting and outcrops of fossiliferous limestone and shale that are exposed along roadcuts, rivers and in stone quarries. During the three days that Dr. Redman was in the Alpena and Rogers City area, he focused on collecting fossils from five rock units: Ferron Point Formation, Rockport Quarry Limestone, Bell Shale, Rogers City Limestone, and the Dundee Limestone – found in two quarries, Calcite and Rockport.

The Calcite Quarry is an active quarry and is considered to be the world’s largest open pit quarry (~8024 acres or 12.5 mi2). It first opened in 1912 and is currently operated by Carmeuse Lime and Stone. Carmeuse’s quarrying efforts focus on the Dundee Limestone, which is composed of ~97% calcium carbonate, making it one of the purest limestones.

The Calcite quarry is also unique because Carmeuse can grant quarry access to nonemployees for geological study and fossil collecting. The quarry’s lead lab technician, Kimberly Montague, was Dr. Redman’s escort. The generosity of the Carmeuse team allowed the Museum team to collect fossils from the Bell Shale and the Rogers City and Dundee limestones.

Rockport State Park is an inactive limestone and gravel quarry that operated from 1914 to 1948 by the Kelley’s Island Lime and Transport Company. The abandoned quarry consists of 300 acres in a 4,000 acre state park. Despite being a state park, up to 25 pounds of fossils can be collected per person, per year. Dr. Redman collected fossils from the Bell Shale, Rockport Quarry Limestone, and the Ferron Point Formation.

The fossils from this year’s field work have not been curated yet, but here are some of the fossils collected last year:

By: Dr. Cory Redman, the GRPM’s Science Curator

Collections

The GRPM’s Creepy Collections Tour.

See the Spookiest Artifacts.

The Grand Rapids Public Museum houses a vast Collections of more than 250,000 artifacts and specimens, including some creepy, yet extremely interesting finds. In the spirit of Halloween, our team curated a Creepy Collections tour, fit for anyone who’s ready to experience the spooky side of the Museum. Happy Haunting!

Bowl, Hiroshima WWII.

This seemingly simple bowl is far from simple. Intricately decorated with stylized floral designs and lotus petal panels, the chemical structure of the glaze has changed due to extreme heat. This artifact is an example of the damaging effects of the atomic bomb which was used on the city of Hiroshima, Japan in 1945.

Brain Box.

Yes, you read correctly. This box used for shipping the brains of deceased patients by rail from Pine Rest Mental Hospital to the Neuropsychiatric Institute at the University of Michigan where they were examined and then returned. The black wooden shipping box contains a white metal pot with a lid.

Precatory Pea.

This grass skirt features a trim made from cowrie shells, red and black precatory pea seeds, and white job’s tears seeds.

Precatory peas originate in tropical climates and are incredibly poisonous – 75 times more poisonous than ricin. One pea could kill a full grown man. The red and black ladybug pea is often used as decoration and for jewelry. Making jewelry with these peas is dangerous; a simple pin prick can lead to death.

Toepler-holtz Static Electric Generator.

In the mid 1800s, German physicist Wilhelm Holtz developed the most advanced electrostatic generator known at the time. His design was based on a glass disc which could be rotated at a high speed, very near to a second stationary disc. Induction plates mounted on the fixed disc would pick up electrical charge with each rotation. During the early twentieth century these machines were being used in doctor’s offices around the country to treat a variety of ailments.

This object is scientifically significant because it is an early example of how new technologies like electricity were put to, sometimes fraudulent medical uses, otherwise known as a “quack device.”

Cane Gun.

This sword is actually the equivalent of a modern day shotgun. Known as a poacher’s gun, the owner would use it as a walking stick when walking through the king’s land to hide the fact that he was poaching. After a game warden had passed, poachers would reattach the stock and continue the hunt. Most likely produced in Portugal for use in Germany.

Happy Halloween!

By: The GRPM Staff

Virtual Education Resources for Students

Museum Learning Catered for Your Students' Needs.

Benefits of Museum Learning.

Through close partnerships with school districts and universities, the GRPM strives to continually improve and match our program offerings to the needs of K-12 learners. As Dr. Erica Hamilton, Associate Professor of Literacy and Technology at Grand Valley State University, explains, “museums are valuable resources that provide students with opportunities to develop key skills.”

“Spending time in the GRPM expands learners’ definitions of literacy, specifically opportunities to read, write, listen, hear, and see different texts (e.g., videos, artifacts, images).”

Dr. Erica Hamilton

The GRPM has a diverse collection of objects and exhibits that connect to curriculum topics and provide meaningful, place-based educational experiences not available in the classroom. Students can learn about science, history and culture by engaging with unique Museum resources, including artifacts, exhibits and community stories. The Museum’s educational programs are based on a constructivist learning philosophy. Our educators use inquiry-based strategies, allowing students to grapple with content and generate understandings individually and as a class. Each guided education program is aligned to curriculum standards and evaluated regularly with student and teacher surveys and assessments to ensure that programs are effective.

NEW! Distance Learning Offerings.

The GRPM Education team has worked hard to develop new distance learning opportunities for students. We’ve aimed to provide flexible programming that fits a wide range of learning needs and can be incorporated across a variety of school formats. Most of our distance learning resources have been adapted from existing programs and activities, but others were developed to leverage the virtual format and engage learners in innovative ways.

Facilitated Virtual Learning.

Interactive programs led by Museum Educators via Zoom bring social studies and science standards to life using artifacts, media, interactive prompts and more! Explore the history of the local community from hundreds of years ago, investigate amazing animal adaptations or tour the solar system with an astronomy expert. Most reservations include post-presentation activities to extend the learning. Programs run 30-45 minutes and cost $100 per session. Work with group scheduling to select a program topic at a time that fits your needs!

Free Downloadable Resources and Activity Guides.

Check out these free educational resources to augment lessons and keep kids engaged with distance learning. Download or share this content with students to incorporate Museum exhibits and artifacts into your instruction, available at grpm.org/schools.

Virtual Discovery Kits. These activity sheets provide information on a variety of science, history and cultural topics and allow students to ask questions, be creative and reflect on their learning.

Virtual Scavenger Hunts for Digital Collections. Use these scavenger hunts to explore the vast resource of the Digital Collections website which contains a quarter of a million records. Students will practice literacy, make connections, find patterns and use other deep thinking skills.

Exhibit Tour Videos. Simulate a virtual visit to the GRPM’s memorable core exhibits including Anishinabek, Newcomers and West Michigan Habitats. More to come!

Visit the K-12 School Visits page to learn more or request programs and resources today!

By: Erin Koren, the GRPM’s Director of Education

Emma Cole, Grand Rapids Flora Pioneer

Successful Teacher and Botanist.

Emma Jane Cole is best known for being a well-loved teacher and an esteemed botanist at a time when there were almost no women in the sciences.

Emma Jane Cole was born on January 23, 1845 in Milan, Ohio. Her family moved to Vergennes Township in Michigan, roughly 11 miles east of Grand Rapids, sometime between 1855 and 1859. After she graduated from high school, Emma taught at the Vergennes District School, the Lowell Union School and the Greenville High School. In 1876, 31-year-old Emma enrolled in Cornell University in New York to study botany (the study of plants), only six years after the university had started admitting women. She completed two years at Cornell University before returning to Grand Rapids and becoming a teacher at Central High School in 1881. Emma taught there for 26 years, retiring in 1907.

Emma was one of the first female members of the Kent Scientific Institute, now known as the Grand Rapids Public Museum, and was the curator of its botanical collection and was elected vice president in 1900. The Kent Scientific Institute’s collection was housed at Central High School for many years, giving the teachers access to its collection and library for instructional purposes.

When Emma started teaching at Central High School, she was assigned grammar and history, but her lessons on these subjects were very tedious. It wasn’t until she got the opportunity to teach botany, a subject she loved, did she blossom and became one of the most popular teachers at the high school. Early in her teaching at Central High School, Emma recognized a need for an up-to-date account of the plants in the Grand Rapids area to aid in the teaching of botany. This was the inspiration for a project that would end in 1901 with a published book titled: Grand Rapids Flora: A Catalogue of the Flowering Plants and Ferns Growing Without Cultivation in the Vicinity of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Emma publishised other scientific articles, but her 1901 book is the most well-known.

The Grand Rapids Flora is still the most comprehensive account of plants in the greater Grand Rapids area and still referenced by botanists today. The book includes 1,290 taxa covering 585 square miles, with most of the plant specimens collected between 1892-1900. It includes 16 townships of Kent and Ottawa counties, centered around Grand Rapids, and a quarter of Vergennes Township, reflecting the area around Emma’s family country home. The Grand Rapids Flora also includes common names for the plants, general blooming times, habitat preferences, and the occurrence of rare and invasive species. Emma wrote the book by hand, because typewriters were not readily available at that time, and paid for the entire cost of the project, including printing and field work associated expenses. This was not a small expense and Emma only had a small teaching salary.

Emma corresponded with botanists around the world, trading information and plant specimens to create an extensive herbarium, which is a collection of dried, pressed plants, scientifically labeled and organized. Charles Sprague Sargent, who was the first director of the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University and a long-time colleague of Emma’s, named a new species of hawthorn, Crataegus coleae, in her honor. Crataegus coleae is still considered a valid species today.

Emma’s travels can be re-traced from the plant specimens she collected. She traveled to Europe in 1903, went out West in 1905, to Cuba in 1908 and Mexico in 1910. Emma fell ill on her return trip from Mexico and was hospitalized in San Antonio, Texas, dying shortly thereafter. Her illness was pronounced “walking typhoid,” but her death certificate, dated April 25, 1910, says that the cause of death was acute nephritis – kidney failure.

Emma is buried in the Vergennes Township cemetery near the little Methodist church she had attended as a young girl. Her grave is marked by a large stone which she selected years before. Emma left several significant donations, including to the Grand Rapids Board of Education to support the Botany Laboratory at Central High School. She set up a fund for an annual flower service to be held by one of nine churches in downtown Grand Rapids on the second Saturday of June. The sermon was to focus on flowers and the church was to be amply decorated with floral arrangements, to perpetuate a love and interest in flowers. This service was held every year until 1968. To the Kent Scientific Institute, Emma willed her personal herbarium collection, consisting of 3,581 curated plant specimens and 1,278 pressed specimens that still needed to be mounted. She also donated her microscope, prepared slides and lantern slides, 300 copies of Grand Rapids Flora, and all future sales from the book. Emma also left an endowment to the University of Michigan to establish the Emma J. Cole Fellowship, for a graduate student pursuing studies in botany that has given evidence of distinguished attainments. This fellowship continues today.

Over 2,600 plant specimens collected by Emma are on long-term loan to the University of Michigan Herbarium from the Grand Rapids Public Museum, where they are being utilized for research and collegiate education. About three-fifths of this collection come from Michigan, mostly near Grand Rapids, and the rest of the plant specimens were collected during Emma’s travels or received through correspondents with other botanists active in the U.S. between 1880 and 1895. Additional plant specimens collected by Emma are housed at the Michigan State University Herbarium, the Albion College Herbarium, and numerous other herbariums across the country.

In 1994, Emma was remembered in the celebration of Women’s History Month in Grand Rapids in a play which explored the accomplishments of four Grand Rapids’ women. On October 17, 2007, Emma Jane Cole was inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame for her achievements in the field of science and technology.

By: Dr. Cory Redman, the GRPM’s Science Curator

Mars Opposition

Spot Mars in the Sky!

There is an element of timing involved in stargazing. The Earth’s motion around the Sun gives an ever-changing vista on the fixed stars through the seasons. The planets progress, each at its own rate, providing a changing lineup of conjunctions, oppositions, and sometimes brief windows of especially good visibility.

For Mars, the opportunity comes every 26 months, when Earth passes within about 60 million miles of its neighbor. Mars opposition is when Mars is directly across from the Sun from our perspective. When in opposition Mars will rise at sunset and be visible all night, setting at sunrise. Since the orbits of Earth and Mars are not perfectly circular, the distance varies depending on the time of year at which the lineup occurs. At a particularly good opposition, like the one in 2003, we’re within 35 million miles of Mars. In July 2018 it was just over 35 million miles, but the alignment was low in our Michigan sky, and the telescopic image of Mars wavered in a thick column of summer atmosphere — the surface of the planet further obscured by a planet-wide dust storm. This month, we’re not quite as close to Mars as we were two years ago — about 39 million miles — but the fact of the alignment happening in autumn means Mars is higher in our sky than the last time around. That means less turbulent air to look through, and so far the weather (on Mars) is cooperating too.

These near passes with our rusty desert neighbor also provide another kind of opportunity. They are the best time for a spacecraft visit, the distance between the two worlds being the shortest. The Viking missions, Mars Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Curiosity, InSight, and others, all launched for Mars in the months leading up to an opposition event. This year it is the Rover Perseverance and its companion, Mars Helicopter Ingenuity, launched July 30, that are now cruising toward Mars for a scheduled powered landing at Jezero Crater in February.

This new Mars mission improves upon those of the past. Built around the successful structure of the Curiosity Rover, and with a similar but improved powered landing system, Perseverance hosts the current generation of new and improved scientific instruments. These include 23 specialized cameras, microphones to listen to the Martian environment, a ground penetrating radar system, and a core sampling mechanism for collecting samples of the crust for return to Earth by a future mission. Perseverance will also be the first mission to conduct experiments specific to an eventual human presence on Mars, including one to produce oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, and one that tests potential space suit materials. The experiment that most sets this rover apart from its predecessors though must be the Mars Helicopter Ingenuity. If successful, this drone will act as a scout for the rover and pave the way for a new mode of exploring alien worlds.

Want to see Mars in the sky? It will be hard to miss. Rising in the hour around dusk, with best viewing between about 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. Mars will climb above 50 degrees in altitude to the south, the brightest point of light in the sky until Venus comes up just before sunrise (it will just edge out Jupiter in brightness). Mars is noticeably amber to reddish in color. One factor that could interfere is smoke from the fires out west, but the brightness of Mars will work in our favor, even if there is a little haze to look through.

If you have access to a telescope, then this opposition will be your best opportunity to glimpse Mars’ south polar ice cap and the visible contrast of its highlands and lowlands. Patience at the eyepiece pays off especially with Mars as the longer you allow for the image to integrate in your vision, the more details you will see. One useful trick toward seeing more detail is to draw while you observe. This also leaves you with a keepsake to show others at the end of the session.

Weather permitting, public nights on October 17 and 24 will be held at the Veen Observatory this month. Visit graaa.org for all details.

Happy stargazing.

By: John Foerch, Planetarium Production Programmer for the GRPM’s Roger B. Chaffee Planetarium.

1928 Spillman Carousel Update!

Inside-look.

The GRPM’s Exhibit Specialist gives you an inside-look at the restoration process of one of the Spillman Carousel horses.

Behind-the-scenes Collections

Tips for Fall Stargazing

Fall Equinox is Here.

Today is the autumnal equinox, marking the astronomical end of summer and the beginning of autumn. The autumn sky promises to bring exciting new spectacles including fall constellations and a range of planets. Additionally, the sun continues to set earlier each night, giving us more time to appreciate the summer constellations.

What is the Equinox?

To understand the equinox, consider the Earth’s relationship to the sun. Imagine a thin sheet spread out across the solar system. The Sun is at the center and all the planets lie upon it circling the sun at their various distances, with inner planets circling faster and outer planets circling slower. The Earth’s equator is tipped with respect to this sheet, so for half of the year the northern hemisphere receives more direct sunlight, and for the other half of the year, the southern hemisphere does. The two points during the year where sunlight falls equally on both the northern and southern hemispheres are called the equinoxes.

Earth’s tilt also affects where planets are in the sky. Let’s imagine our “celestial sheet” from Earth’s point of view. From here in Michigan in the northern hemisphere, the path of the planets always remain to the south, but as the Earth turns, the angle it makes with the horizon bobs up and down with the day. In autumn, the angle is shallow in the evening and steep by morning. This means that any planets in the early morning hours will be well above the horizon, which makes for clearer viewing.

What Planets Can I See?

Currently, Jupiter and Saturn are particularly bright and easy to spot in the south all evening. Mars rises during twilight, and Venus rises in the morning. Mars is the particular feature of the season as the Earth makes a close pass of it during early October. It will briefly become brighter than Jupiter, and its surface features will be clearer in a telescope than they have been since 2003. The Moon is currently waxing in the evening sky toward the full moon on October 1, and will wane again into the morning through the first half of the month, which bodes well for dark skies in mid-October.

What Stars Can I See?

In summer we watched the planets Jupiter and Saturn and the Summer Triangle progress westward with each passing evening. The Summer Triangle remains prominent even now as chill comes into the air, but it is joined to the east by the Fall Square. The stars of the Fall Square are not as bright as those of the Summer Triangle, but the easy-to-spot square shape makes it unmistakable.

The left corner of the Fall Square is the bright blue star Alpheratz, a curiously-named star derived from the Arabic for “the horse’s belly button,” — named because it was traditionally part of the constellation Pegasus.

To the north, the Big Dipper is visible, but low enough to be blocked by trees. But, when the Dipper is low, the “W” of Cassiopeia swings high. Cassiopeia and the Fall Square are the two main star patterns to orient by in the autumn.

Challenge Yourself!

Pick a clear night and a dark observing location to try to see autumn’s most treasured deep sky object — the Andromeda galaxy. Orient yourself so that you can see both the“W” of Cassiopeia and Alpheratz in the Fall Square. Scan from Cassiopeia to Alpheratz with naked eye or binoculars. Look for a diffuse glow about halfway between them. It can be tricky, but be patient and try a darker night (or location) if it’s not apparent. If you succeed, you will be looking at the most distant object human eyes can see without optical aid.

Join experienced astronomers of the Grand Rapids Ameateur Astronomical Association (GRAAA) for Public Nights at the Veen Observatory to view the night sky. Visit graaa.org for more details.

By: John Foerch, Planetarium Production Programmer for the GRPM’s Roger B. Chaffee Planetarium.

Image credits: Credits: NASA, ESA, J. Dalcanton, B.F. Williams, and L.C. Johnson (University of Washington), the PHAT team, and R. Gendler

Unboxing Rocks and Minerals.

Unboxing with the GRPM's Science Curator.

Find out more about this specimen that was discovered during a day of unboxing to digitally document some of the GRPM’s natural history Collections at the Grand Rapids Public Museum’s Community Archives and Research Center (CARC).