Milwaukee Public Museum

The Milwaukee Public Museum is the kind of densely packed natural history and anthropology museum that the late 19th century built and the 21st century struggles to replicate. Founded in 1882, it has accumulated 4.5 million specimens and objects that fill 150,000 square feet of exhibit space in a way that feels overwhelming in the best possible sense.

The three main draws are: the Streets of Old Milwaukee, a full-scale indoor recreation of a turn-of-the-century Milwaukee street complete with shop interiors, gas lamps and cobblestones; the Puelicher Butterfly Wing, a live butterfly garden where dozens of species fly freely around visitors; and the Rainforest, a multilevel walk-through tropical forest. The dinosaur hall and the North American Indian exhibit are also well worth exploring.

The museum sits on West Wells Street, about 10 minutes on foot from the main downtown hotels. The IMAX theater in the same building runs a separate schedule of films.

things to do museum
A story
The Streets of Old Milwaukee exhibit, which recreates a late-19th-century Milwaukee street in immersive detail inside the museum, has been largely unchanged since it opened in 1965. Generations of Milwaukee schoolchildren have taken field trips to it. When the museum announced plans to update it in 2020, the backlash from nostalgic locals was significant enough to slow the project considerably.