With $1 million from Culver's, new Milwaukee Public Museum will have frozen custard exhibit
When the new Milwaukee Public Museum opens in early 2027, there will be an exhibit that celebrates and teaches about a key Milwaukee staple — frozen custard.
MPM announced Tuesday that Culver's has donated $1 million to the museum project, making possible a custard shop exhibit in the museum's Milwaukee Revealed gallery — the spiritual successor to the current museum's Streets of Old Milwaukee.
As visitors stroll down the gallery's streetscape, they will come across a custard shop storefront. Inside, they will learn about Wisconsin's dairy industry, the natural resources that go into making the popular treat and the history of frozen custard shops in Milwaukee. There also will be immersive and hands-on elements, with the smell of freshly baked waffle cones piped into the exhibit and the opportunity to operate a custard machine that will serve faux custard.
In a statement, MPM president and CEO Ellen Censky said, "We are grateful for Culver's generous gift to the Future Museum that will support our efforts to share more about the land-based processes used to make frozen custard — from cow to cone."
Milwaukee Revealed will be one of the new museum's five permanent galleries. The others are:
Time Travel, a gallery focused on the planet's deep past, including when dinosaurs roamed the earth;
Wisconsin Journey, a gallery of exhibits focused on geological and cultural history in different regions of the state;
Living in a Dynamic World, a gallery focused on areas and cultures across the world;
Rainforest, an immersive exploration through tropical rainforests.
The new museum also will have a planetarium, a live butterfly vivarium, a rooftop terrace and two mixing zones. The mixing zones will be spaces dedicated to temporary exhibits, programming and rotating displays of artifacts and collections that are otherwise kept in storage.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Culver's donates to Milwaukee Public Museum for frozen custard exhibit
