The Elgin Public Museum was the first museum I worked at after moving to Illinois in 2019. Although I was only there for a short period, the experience revealed much to me about the joys and challenges of running a small local museum. The EPM is a natural history museum operating out of Lords Park in Elgin IL. As an organization, the EPM has existed since the 1960s, but the facility itself is a historic structure dating to 1906 and holds the unique distinction as the oldest museum building that still functions as a museum.
In addition to myself, the museum’s staff consisted of an education coordinator, a part-time educator, and a desk attendant. As a result, many responsibilities fell under my supervision as museum coordinator, including managing the day-to-day affairs of the institution. From processing memberships to coordinating volunteers to stocking and running the store, the coordinator position gave me valuable insights into the numerous quotidian tasks that are necessary to keep a museum functioning.
While the everyday demands of museum operations consumed a sizable portion of my working hours, the coordinator position also afforded me the opportunity to sharpen my curatorial skills by creating and maintaining exhibits and managing the collections. Below are listed some of the most important projects I worked on while at the EPM:
- Designing and installing temporary zoological exhibits. I deliberately displayed specimens that had either never been on display before or had been in storage for several years.
- Working with a dedicated volunteer, I initiated the first exhaustive inventory of the collection in twenty years, updating and revising the museum’s records in PastPerfect at the same time.
- Updating the content and aesthetics of the museum’s labels and panels. In addition to implementing modern graphic design standards, I included Spanish translations of interpretation contents to accommodate the EPM’s large Spanish-speaking visitor bases.
Although I left the EPM in early March 2020 to work at the Chicago History Museum, I remained on hand to direct the development of an upcoming anniversary exhibition celebrating one hundred years of museum operations. As of this writing, the exhibit is still in progress and will include several panels, archival photographs, and objects from throughout the museum’s history.
Gallery: Please click on the following photographs for higher resolution images.
Natural history exhibit on peccaries. 
Natural history display on methods of animal flight. 
Natural history exhibit on varieties of shells. 
Historic bird exhibits 
Historic bird exhibits 
Example of new exhibit labels, including Spanish translations. 
Additional labels. 
New uniform labels (top) to replace older signage. 
Skull exhibits I assembled as an EPM volunteer. 
Skull exhibits I assembled as an EPM volunteer. 
Cleaning and maintaining old cases of skull casts and authentic specimens. 
My responsibilities included stocking and maintaining the museum store. 
The Elgin Public Museum is a historic structure that has stood in Lords Park since 1906.
