Lake County Discovery Museum visitors have until Aug. 31 to visit the space in its longtime home, situated in a quaint collection of farm buildings among oak trees and a replica mastodon at the Lakewood Forest Preserve in Wauconda.
Then the staff will catalog, pack and carefully move the museum’s 23,000 artifacts and other paper documents to its new home at the forest preserves’ general offices in Libertyville. The museum will reopen in about a year at the new location.
The Lake County Board purchased the general offices for $4.1 million in 2010 and agreed the museum eventually would move there. In February, board president Ann Maine approved plans to close the Wauconda site this summer, said Nan Buckardt, Lake County Forest Preserve District director of education.
One of the main reasons to close the Wauconda facility is that the artifacts and displays are housed in old farm buildings that were retrofitted to create a museum, said Rebekah Snyder, director of development for the district.
“The temperature, light and humidity are really difficult to control there,” Snyder said.
“We want to be proactive” and not have to deal with potential issues, such as flooding, she said.
The district had postponed the move when Gov. Bruce Rauner put a hold on a $750,000 capital grant award approved for the forest preserve during Gov. Pat Quinn’s administration, Buckardt said. Similar funds are being withheld from other museums, she said.
The likely sale of the Discovery Museum’s Curt Teich Postcard Collection, which contains more than three million postcards from around the world, in part allowed the forest preserve to lower the cost of the museum move, Buckardt said. The district is currently negotiating with the Newberry Library in Chicago about taking the collection.
The district will spend about $1.6 million to complete the museum project, which is about $750,000 less than what it originally had planned to spend, Buckardt said.
“The reason there’s such a lag between when we close and reopen is not only that we are innovating and reimagining exhibits, but we’re also moving the entire collection, all the archival materials, the school diaries from the 1800s, the old maps, postcards of Lake County, personal diaries from various families,” she said.
The district will take bids on a state-of-the-art collapsible compact storage facility in late spring, Buckardt said.
There are also plans for new classroom space on the first floor and a reading room where the public can do research.
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“It will look much like a small library,” Buckardt said.
According to Snyder, while visitors won’t be able to see permanent and temporary exhibitions for about a year, the staff will continue to do programs at schools and forest preserve facilities.
“We will continue the annual Civil War Days in July, and after the museum closes, the annual Farm Heritage Show will continue in September,” Snyder said. “Lakewood is still our forest preserve. So many people visit it for so many reasons.”
Snyder said the district has the option to move the museum again when the timing is right — and noted it may not be housed forever at the general offices.
Museum collections manager Diana Dretske has a busy year ahead of her working to catalog and prepare collections for the move. She admits being a bit sad about the changes.
“Most of my career has been working here at this facility,” she said. “I love this spot.”
“We do expect people to miss it,” Buckardt said. “It’s a lovely site. The buildings have charm and character. The thing that’s most exciting for me by moving the collection to the general offices, we will be able to have them cared for in a much better fashion. That’s really a key part of this whole decision taking care of this material that’s irreplaceable.”
Sheryl DeVore is a freelancer for the News-Sun