Museums and Exhibits Featuring John Muir

Global

Museums may contact the company Exhibit Envoy, who organizes the traveling exhibit for Nature's Beloved Son: Rediscovering John Muir's Botanical Legacy - as well as many others in art, history and culture, and natural history.

California

The Muir Experience - a new museum at the University of the Pacific introduces the archives of John Muir that are preserved and made available for research at the University of the Pacific. The Muir Experience is designed to follow Muir's ideas from germination to sharing them with the world. The front room represents where he got his inspiration including his personal 1000-volume library in his original bookcases, two paintings from his friend and artist William Keith, and walls adorned in photographs of Yosemite Valley. The room also includes one of his writing desks where he recorded his ideas. The back room has exhibits including the manifestation of his ideas through his journals, letters, and manuscripts. The Muir Experience is located in the lobby of the William Knox Holt Library and Learning Center on the University of the Pacific campus in Stockton, California
California Museum , Sacramento - California Hall of Fame - John Muir was an original inductee - The California Hall of Fame was established in 2006 by the Museum and former First Lady Maria Shriver to honor legendary people who embody California's innovative spirit and have made their mark on history. Inductees come from all walks of life and have made distinguished achievements across a variety fields, including the arts, education, business and labor, science, sports, philanthropy and public service. Additional inductees are selected annually.
John Muir Geotourism Center, Coulterville, (off-site link) - Located in historic Coulterville, California, where John Muir stopped on his 1868 walk from San Francisco to Yosemite, the John Muir Geotourism Center offers a small exhibit space, along with live and audio tours of the John Muir Highway route to Yosemite, and a variety of programs to inspire people of all ages to explore, learn, share, and preserve the values of the John Muir Legacy.
Oakland Museum of California - (off-site link) - This famed museum opens a new temporary exhibit on August 6, 2011 spotlighting the life of John Muir as well as eight Modern Day Muirs. A Walk in the Wild: Continuing John Muir's Journey (off-site link) highlights Muir's immersion in the natural world of California. Through interactive, multisensory displays of natural specimens and audio and video, - and even smell - visitors will experience a simulation of Muir's exploration behind Yosemite Falls, his trek from Yosemite to Mount Whitney, and even his night spent in a hollow giant sequoia observing the forest burning around him. People currently involved in environmental research and activism are celebrated as well —including a Yosemite National Park geologist, a bighorn-sheep biologist inspired by Muir, and an Oakland tree-planter/activist. The Sierra Club's own Bonnie Gisel, Muir scholar and curator of the Club's LeConte Memorial Lodge in Yosemite is included. Told through OMCA's collections of art, history, and natural science, interactive digital technology, and journals, manuscripts, videos, audio, natural specimens, and original drawings — the exhibition is a tribute to Muir’s legacy and to the importance of continued environmental stewardship.
John Muir National Historic Site, Martinez - The Martinez Ranch where Muir lived for many years, tending orchards and writing his conservation messages, has long featured the historic house he lived in, built by his father-in-law. Now, the NPS is revamping the visitor center to feature more exhibits and displays explaining John Muir's life and legacy. You can view many Muir artifacts and historic photographs on the NPS site for Museum Collections for John Muir National Historic Site.
Yosemite Conservation Heritage Center (formerly LeConte Memorial Lodge) - The Sierra Club's historic LeConte Memorial in Yosemite Valley includes a comprehensive display about John Muir and his life and legacy. A life-size photographic cut-out of Muir greets visitors, a creative Earth-Turtles-and-Muir quote surprises visitors, and evening programs frequently feature Muir as a topic.
Yosemite Museum (National Park Service) - See John Muir's Life in 4 Artifacts - featuring colorized photo of John Muir with his tin cup, and 4 artifacts: a whipsaw, used by Muir to cut fallen timber to build Hutchings' sawmill; his stakes to measure glacial movement, the tin cup with the inscription "1895 John Muir's kit used in trip through Tuolumne Canyonâ€¦," and the outline of a foot on yellow paper made inÂ 1904 by a 66 year old John Muir who traced his foot for shoemaker J. Dahlstrom to construct him a pair of shoes for his glacier climbing trip in Siberia.
John Muir and the Personal Experience of Nature - Riverside Metropolitan Museum (Special Exhibit was Open December 2, 2012 - October 26, 2014). This temporary exhibit include the traveling exhibition, "Nature's Beloved Son: Rediscovering John Muir's Botanical Legacy," plus objects and specimens from Riverside Metropolitan's collection and Smithsonian's National Herbarium; and images and resources from the Holt-Atherton Special Collections (University of the Pacific); the Local History collection of the Riverside Public Library; the UC Riverside Department of Biology; and California Museum of Photography. A video of the exhibit is available on You Tube from one of the exhibit's visitors.

New Jersey/New York

Elis Island National Monument - Special Exhibit Celebrates John Muir and the National Park Service Centennial - April 6, 2016 - September 5, 2016.This exhibit reprises the Clan Currie Society's exhibition it produced in 2005 about John Muir at Ellis Island, to celebrate the Centennial of the National Park Service. The program opens to the public on Wednesday, April 6 (Tartan Day) and will run through Labor Day, 2016.Â

Washington, D.C.

The Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery - Features at least three portraits of John Muir and a bust (not including items for which no online illustration is available):
- Platinum Print of John Muir by William Dassonville, circa. 1910 - part of the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery Collection.
- John Muir by Orlando Rouland, 1917. (off-site link) [or see our image of Rouland's painting of John Muir - part of the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery Collection. On view at National Portrait Gallery, South Gallery 322. For a full description of this painting, see Portrait of a Prophet: Orlando Rouland's John Muir, 1917 from the National Portrait Gallery's blog "Face to Face."
- Charcoal Drawing of John Muir by Garnet W. Jex (undated) - National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; transfer from the National Museum of Natural History.
- Bronze Sculpture Bust of John Muir by Edwin Keith Harkness - National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; transfer from the National Gallery of Art.
The Smithsonian's National Postal Museum
- From June 9, 2016 - March 25, 2018, the National Postal Museum offered an exhibition named Trailblazing: 100 Years of Our National Parks, which includes: original John Muir Stamp Art from the 1998 Celebrate the Century Issue (off-site link -if that is unavailable, choose on-site link) on loan from the United States Postal Service, Postmaster General's Collection. This stamp art is unique in that it just shows Muir with background of Yosemite, without the postal service postage markings.

Wisconsin

Wisconsin Historical Society - (of-site link) The library of the Wisconsin Historical Society features a display of John Muir's remarkable invention, a clock-study desk that automatically rotated books Muir was studying.
Muir Memorial Park - Really an outdoor museum, includes a nature trail surrounding Ennis Lake (which Muir's family had called "Fountain Lake."
Enjoy this excellent 10 minute video slide show of the Memorial Park showing Muir's ties there. (off-site link to YouTube.com)

Scotland

John Muir's Birthplace - (off-site link) Muir's birthplace in Dunbar, Scotland, has been transformed into an interpretive center with three floors of interactive exhibits explaining the importance of John Muir to the world-wide conservation movement.

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