Going to the museum can be a quick trip to see a certain exhibit or it can be an adventure lasting several hours as you participate in the many available activities. From experiencing Old Town Arkansas to "Tinkering" to your heart's content in the Tinkering Studio, there is something for everyone at the ASU Museum.
Museum Group Exploration
A-State Museum offers numerous tours for everyone to enjoy. Have a group interested in visiting? Guided tours can last anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour. However, you can also guide yourself through the Museum at your leisure.
Learn more about Group Exploration >>
Family Reading Castle
Based on the Museum’s Mother Goose collection of characters, this interactive play area includes a castle-tent, puppets, and other things that spark the imagination. Surrounded by nursery rhymes, castles, and fairies this cozy spot offers a space for parents and grandparents to spend time playing and reading with little ones. This space was funded by a Phi Kappa Phi literacy grant.
See the Mother Goose Picture Show here >>
Tinkering Studio
Simply put, a Tinkering Studio is a studio workshop for playful invention and exploration. It is a place where visitors of all ages can spend time working and playing with a variety of tools and materials to create whatever their imaginations can design.
Surrounded by cabinets, workbenches, shelves, and tools, guests are encouraged to slow down, become intensely engaged in the investigation of scientific wonders, and create things. The ample supply of varied materials means visitors can experiment, test, and try again. With no right or wrong answers, the Tinkering Studio is a place of making, sharing, and learning.
Admission to the Tinkering Studio is free, thanks to the Arkansas Discovery Network and a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Children from two to ninety two are encouraged to visit this permanent exhibition. The hours for the Studio may vary from the normal Museum Hours. Call to verify our open times.
Arkansas History Children's Art Project
View the English slideshow here >>
View the Spanish slideshow here >>
Patch Program
Early Arkansas: Ingenuity, Skills, Hard Work
This patch is designed to help scouts learn that farming and homesteading in Arkansas during the late 1800s and early 1900s required hard work, many special skills, and ingenuity.
Download the questionnaire for Brownie Girl Scouts and Cub Scouts >>
Download the questionnaire for Junior-Ambassador Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts >>
Portals of the Soul
Ancient Peoples of Northeast Arkansas
This patch is designed to help scouts learn about native peoples of Northeast Arkansas.
Download the Portals questionnaire for Brownie Girl Scouts and Cub Scouts>>
Download the Portals Questionnaire for Junior-Ambassador Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts >>
Genealogy
Your Family Tree—A Part of History!
For over seventy-five years Arkansas State University Museum has been this region’s principal repository of tangible local heritage. The lion’s share of the Museum’s holdings are donations from families in Northeast Arkansas who felt a sense of kinship with this region’s past and a desire to preserve and share their history with future generations. Thus, ASU Museum came into being by accepting stewardship of vintage wedding gowns and quilts, tools, farm implements, intriguing gadgets, dolls, furniture, family photographs, a covered wagon and a canoe, mother-of-pearl buttons and button-making tools—even a complete dentist office and other shops from the turn of the 19th century! And so much more. Now these items are in good hands, getting the care they need to continue to the next generation.
But these objects are only part of the heritage story our region has to tell. Each and every member of this community is a living, breathing repository of oral heritage—stories your grandmother and great grandfather told you, stories that will go down in history only if you tell them and pass them onto your children, nieces and nephews, and grandchildren. Make your place in history: keep telling these stories. You can strengthen these stories by backing them up with your family’s genealogy, that is, by completing your “Family Tree.”
Below are some links that will help you trace your roots back to the people with whom your heritage originated, people in your family who deserve to be remembered: your ancestors.
