Grand Rapids Public Museum, Part 2
During the 2025-2026 winter holiday season, I took a trip to western Michigan. During this adventure, I visited the Grand Rapids Public Museum, which is receiving its own three-part mini series. The first part featured the history of the museum, the temporary dinosaur exhibit, a permanent exhibit about the people of Grand Rapids, a permanent exhibit about animals in Michigan, and a special exhibit featuring LEGO models. The second part includes an exhibit near the planetarium, signed baseballs, a large map of Michigan, skeletons, transportation, and exhibits in the Gallaria.
The Roger B. Chaffee Planetarium is named for an astronaut born in Grand Rapids who died during the Apollo 1 fire in 1967. The planetarium hosts live presentations about stars and planets along with educational movies and musical light show experiences. I did not attend a show during my visit, but I did admire the large globe spinning near the entrance. Also nearby were musical instruments from around the world, including dulcimers and lyres.
A unique exhibit stored in a single organized closet was Play Ball: The Largest Collection of Detroit Tigers Autographed Baseballs. Baseball fans Steve Nagengast had collected about 1,200 baseballs with autograph dates ranging from 1901 to 2020 before donating the collection to the museum. My favorite baseball was signed by Ty Cobb, who the Baseball Hall of Fame argues might be the best all-around baseball player of all time. He played for the Detroit Tigers for his entire career except for the final two season, when he played for the Philadelphia Athletics. Outside the baseball closet was a case of artifacts from the GRPM collection. I noted a small plaster sculpture Taking the Oath and Drawing Rations by John Rogers, crafted in 1865 and depicting a scene of Reconstruction after the American Civil War. I had last seen the work of Rogers at Hearthside House in Lincoln, RI, as his sculptures were affordable to middle-class families during the mid-19th century.
Suspended above the Gallaria was Finny, a finback whale skeleton that has been part of the museum collections since 1905. An set of touchscreens describes facts about Finny, including the whale’s length of about seventy-five feet, its likely adult weight of ninety tons, and the whale’s diet of zooplankton. Other skeletons on display included a large tyrannosaur, part of a mastodon skull, and a full mastodon skeleton donated by the Clapp Family. The newest skeleton in the collection had quite a story. It was excavated in Kent City, MI during 2022 and only unveiled at the museum in September 2025. For those who prefer modern vehicles, suspended even higher than Finny is a Driggs Skylark Aircraft constructed in Lansing, MI between 1929 and 1931. The rare biplane is one of twenty-one produced and made of wood, metal, and fabric. On the floor was a Continental De Vaux Convertible Coupe produced in 1932, its last year of production. The car was part of the A is for Automobiles exhibit, a piece of the alphabetical theme that I remember from a previous visit to the museum about twenty years ago.
Back at the top of the stairs, a topographical map of Michigan is illuminated by a modern lighting system, but the map itself dates from 1938. Employees of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) created the piece for a previous location of GRPM at was made of inexpensive plywood from used crates instead of more expensive balsa wood. (The WPA is a frequent guest on the blog, as its employees constructed public buildings and created art across the United States during the Great Depression.) Looking out the nearby window, I spotted four snail sculptures known as Slow Motion. Created by local artist Valerie Wahna for the World of Winter art series, the line of snails patiently cross Blue Bridge, an 1892 railroad crossing over the Grand River that now allows pedestrians to cross. The weather was cold and cloudy, so I enjoyed the snails from a distance.
