Fairbanks Museum, St Johnsbury, Vermont

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The Fairbanks Museum, St. Johnsbury, VT
Thursday, October 28, 2009
On my list is the Fairbanks Natural History Museum in St. Johnsbury, Vermont located at top of the hill in the Main Street historic district. Founded by industrialist Franklin Fairbanks in 1889 the museum is an impressive Victorian building designed specifically to share his private collection with the public. The museum provides an impressive eclectic collection of a little bit of everything you could ever imagine. The place is a miniature “Night at the Museum” and in some ways is very similar to other small museums we’ve visited across New England. These include the Wilson Museum in Castine, Maine, the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont and The Fruitlands Museum in Harvard Mass. Wealthy 18th century industrialist founded all of these museums as places to display their vast personal collections.
The Fairbanks’s specialty is all sorts of taxidermy animals with 75,000 natural science specimens in its collection of 175,000 objects. The stuffed birds specimens make up the largest segment of the displays. If ever there was a specimen of a bird you had always wanted to see there’s a stuffed version of it here. All 440 of the birds found in Vermont, raptors, humming bird, flamingos, sea birds, tropical birds, you name a bird and there’s probably a stuffed one here to view. Unfortunately these are now over 100 year dead creatures and appear to be loosing some of their luster. The collection also contains musical instruments, Native American artifacts, Egyptian artifacts, Stalagmites and Stalactites, minerals, a collection of insect art and much, much more. There’s an active weather station that broadcasts the local weather forecasts over the regions radio stations. The museum also has the only active public planetarium in Vermont. Needless to say the Fairbanks Museum is a very interesting place for an afternoon visit. Unfortunately this 100-year-old museum lacks the interactive dynamic exhibits that modern museums present to our over stimulated electronic youth so children may not have the patience for these displays. The challenge for museums of this type is keeping themselves relevant in this age of high stimulation and short attention spans.

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