Port Huron Museum giving artifacts from now-closed Maritime Center 'a new life'

Sometimes when artifacts remain on display in one place too long, the Port Huron Museums’ Andrew Kercher said it can be easy for visitors to forget they’re there.

But over the last few months, the Carnegie Center has begun integrate items into its displays that were once housed at the now-closed Maritime Center, and Kercher, the museums’ community engagement lead, said they hope the collection of artifacts get a renewed chance to catch the eye of nautical enthusiasts.

“It’s in a new place, it has a new life,” he said.

While some groups, such as the Great Lakes Nautical Society, which had model ships at the center, took back their own items, Mike Delong, vice president of operations at Acheson Ventures, which owns the Maritime Center and surrounding Vantage Point site, confirmed earlier this year that many of the items displayed there had been taken in by the museum after they announced closure of the facility in late 2023.

Kercher said they’d approached Donna Niester, Acheson’s CEO, soon after.

And they took a variety of things, he said — right down to a few desks, chairs, and display cases that housed items.

In a statement this month, Kayla Wendt, the museums’ curator of collections and exhibits, said they were “very grateful to receive the items from the Maritime Center,” as well as for the “ongoing generosity from Acheson Ventures.” She called the items “a great addition to our maritime collection.”

As of last Friday, some of the smaller contributions were easy to spot in the Carnegie Center’s third-floor maritime exhibits, including a large nautical knot display mounted on the museum wall and several island-like displays of eclectically assembled artifacts discovered by divers at the bottom of the St. Clair River.

“These are some of my favorite things,” Kercher said mid-tour of the latter. “And they put these on kind of a display little platforms. Just things that have wound up (here). The oddballs, the odds and ends. Like the ‘90s cellphone. … Lots of watches. Just kind of everything. When you look at it, you’re kind of like, ‘What is all of this?’ Then, you realize.”

One found-items display was centered around detached doll head beside a seized pistol and a toy Lightning McQueen car. There were also rocks, a lighter, a toy dinosaur, beeds, and empty bottles on others.

“Even these display stands. It’s interesting,” Kercher said. Elsewhere, the museum’s integrated an old rescue basket, “which fits in with our shipwreck area here.”

But a variety of other items have brought out and remain in storage while museum staff works to catalog and find a home for them.

Things like a relic piece for the Acheson property’s old railroad days, a massive sturgeon mount, other fish models, art pieces, and iron ore taconite pellets.

“The plan is over the next few months is to integrate that and really be able to swap out some of our maritime stuff,” Kercher said. “Lots of things are being made room for. We have a whole cadre of volunteers, but even with two or three volunteers, it takes a while to process.”

The Port Huron Museums’ Carnegie Center is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday through May 26 when it’ll be open daily until Sept. 15.

For more information on programs and exhibits, visit https://www.phmuseum.org.

Contact Jackie Smith at (810) 989-6270 or [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Port Huron Times Herald: Port Huron Museum giving artifacts from Maritime Center 'a new life'