To celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary, the University of Oregon’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History has opened a new exhibit that highlights cultures that have impacted the United States.

It will showcase rarely seen artifacts from the museum’s collections, giving visitors a unique look at the diverse histories of the land that makes up the United States.

The museum’s marketing and communications specialist, Lexi Briggs, said that when deciding on an exhibit for this celebration, the museum wanted to take advantage of the wide variety of artifacts they have from different time periods.

“We’re not focusing on just the 250 years that this has been called America, right?” said Briggs. “This is a showcasing of the histories of the people, of the place, going back for quite some time, and then also what we’re doing now.”

She showed off one of her favorite artifacts in the exhibit: an illustrated seal skin created by an Inuit artist in Alaska in the 1940s.

“We’re standing right in front of this ink drawing on seal skin, which is maybe three feet wide and a couple feet tall. And it’s a really intricate drawing,” said Briggs. “Almost, it kind of reminds me of comics or like narrative storytelling about what life was like at that time in this place.”

This exhibit is also the first at the museum to be translated into three languages: English, Spanish and Chinuk Wawa, an intertribal language of the Pacific Northwest.

Briggs said the exhibit serves as a reminder that the history of the United States spans longer than just the 250 years being celebrated.

“America 250 — Before, Between, Beyond" opened April 17 and will be on display through the end of the year.

Macy Moore is a reporter with KLCC. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.

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News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/04/19/uo-museum-natural-history-us-semiquincentennial/