Permanent Events / Exhibitions

At the entrance of the Interior Museum is an overview exhibit featuring hundreds of objects and photographs. This exhibit traces the Department's various activities, which at times included oversight of St. Elizabeths Hospital, the District of Columbia Police Department, and the U.S. Patent Office. Across the hall is the changing exhibit gallery displaying a broad range of topics and media from photographs of caves to artists' impressions of clean streams.

Photograph of the Department of the Interior Overview exhibit at the Interior Museum.

The remainder of the Museum is divided into eight galleries. Each gallery interprets an Interior bureau and features expertly crafted 1930s era dioramas. One notable diorama depicts a 1910 coal mine explosion with the rescue crew arriving. Another diorama, below, features the land office in Guthrie, Oklahoma, in 1889. Metal silhouettes in many of the wall niches are examples of the Art Deco style preserved in this Museum. Five galleries use videos to present contemporary information on the work of the bureaus. Scenes in the videos include dramatic footage of the Yellowstone fire and a rescue operation after a plane crash in Washington, D.C.

Metal silhouettes in many of the wall niches are examples of the Art Deco style preserved in this Museum.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs video depicts contemporary Indian life including a Cherokee classroom, a fish hatchery, and a tribal council. The recently updated U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service gallery describes efforts to preserve and protect wildlife. Artifacts that present these concepts include a deformed mallard duck skeleton damaged by the chemical selenium, Duck Stamp artwork, and a California condor puppet used to feed chicks in captivity.

The Museum displays a wide range of artifacts. Examples include:

• four painted murals by the artist and explorer William Henry Jackson showing the government-sponsored geological surveys in the 1860s and 1870s
• a mounted American bison head a bald eagle and highly polished concrete cores from construction at Grand Coulee and Hoover Dams
• an animated diorama of the Juneau, Alaska, Gold Mine in 1935 featuring a two-minute cycle of day and night.

Land office in Guthrie, Oklahoma, in 1889. Diorama in the Interior Museum

Click the diorama picture to view the online exhibition of Dioramas: from the Permanent Collection of U.S. Department of the Interior Museum.