During your visit to the Wisconsin Historical Museum, explore Wisconsin history from prehistoric times to the present through permanent and temporary exhibits featuring artifacts, photographs, full-scale dioramas, audio-visual presentations and interactive multimedia programs. Be sure to stop by Wisconsin Historical Museum Store to shop for gifts and souvenirs unique to the Wisconsin Historical Museum.
Permanent Exhibits
People of the Woodlands
People of the Woodlands examines the lives of Wisconsin’s Native American people. Step inside a replica of a house a Native American family would have lived in between A.D. 1100 and 1300, then compare it to the inside of a wigwam, a Native American family’s winter home. Learn about the “Era of Exchange,” a time when Europeans came to Wisconsin to trade with Indians as you explore displays featuring fur, food and footwear the Indians exchanged for manufactured goods such as tools, fabric and jewelry. Additionally the exhibit showcases Native American clothing and bags with intricate beadwork designs made by the Indians.
Frontier Wisconsin
Explore the 1800s Frontier Wisconsin in Frontier Wisconsin. Discover how surface deposits of lead, zinc and copper ore led Native Americans to begin mining in southwestern Wisconsin and how the minerals soon attracted Europeans to the region. Learn how federal government surveyors divided the land and sold parcels to European settlers through artifacts once used by federal government surveyors. Photographers in the exhibit tell the story of the first railroads in Wisconsin built during the 1850s.
The Immigrant State
The Immigrant State explores the reasons immigrants came to Wisconsin during the mid-19th century. Within the exhibit learn about affordable farmland, better paying jobs and the other reasons immigrants were drawn to Wisconsin. See how the immigrants made difficult decisions about which items to bring with them and which items to leave behind on their journey to a new land. Other exhibit displays explore the customs and cultures many of Wisconsin’s immigrants brought with them from their homelands.
Making a Living
See Wisconsin at work. Making a Living chronicles Wisconsin’s early important industries such as lumbering, to its well-known brand names of today including Kleenex, Johnson Wax, Miller Beer and Harley Davidson.
Sense of Community
Sense of Community is an exhibit that explores Wisconsin progressivism and how it helped to establish important labor laws that would eventually be adopted across the United States. Learn how Wisconsin’s idea of public interest politics and a strong clean government set precedent for political, social and economic reform. Discover how county and state fairs were first established in the 19th century as a means for farmers to meet and discuss the latest farming techniques and equipment. On the museum’s fourth floor you can admire Madison’s Capitol Square, a major center for the expression of community life and political demonstrations for many years.
Take home a piece of Wisconsin from the Museum Store. Gifts and souvenirs unique to the Wisconsin Historical Museum are available to purchase.
Travel Tips
- The Wisconsin Historical Museum is ADA complaint.
- There are a number of restaurants within a short distance from the Wisconsin Historical Museum. For a complete list of restaurants in downtown Madison, contact the Madison Convention and Visitors Bureau or Downtown Madison, Inc.