The Friends of the Galt Museum are excited to recognize  Richardson Oil Seeds for a generous  donation to help fund a permanent interactive installation focusing on the importance of  irrigation to Southern Alberta.

They donated $19,000 to build a permanent outdoor exhibit on the south side of the downtown museum, which illustrates the importance of and route water takes from the Rocky Mountains and points east.
 They exhibit, which features scale models of the Rocky Mountains in Alberta and  the geography  out to around Taber, has been operational for about a year.

 It features an interactive pump, so you can pump the water and watch the route it takes. you can also adjust the route by  opening gates to divert the water’s flow.
“ The pump has already been broken a few times, so it certainly has been well used,” said Friends of the Galt Museum‘s Elisha Rasmussen. Museum staff repair the pump as soon as possible.

“So people have really responded the the project,” she said.

 The exhibit also included boxes of grains grown in the area including barley, wheat, oats and canola, though they aren‘t directly connected to the water pump, they just illustrate the types of grain grown in Southern Alberta.

Mary Oordt noted the exhibit helps illustrate the challenges local farmers must face with regards to irrigating the soil.
“ It would end in the Hudson’s Bay,” said Oordt, noting the model doesn’t reflect the route that far away.
 The exhibit was designed by local artist Brad Brown.

The Galt Museum and Lethbridge Historical Society combine their knowledge and resources  to explore Lethbridge neighbourhoods in their new exhibit “Places and Traces.”
The exhibit opens today, May 23 and runs until Sept. 8. It includes suites of old photographs of what the city used to look like plus items including street signs, toys and clothing. There is also a video component featuring familiar faces like Mark Campbell talking about their  neighbourhoods.
“It’s about how neighbours change and how the people living in them change them,” summarized Belinda Crowson putting on her Lethbridge Historical Society hat.

 Crowson, who has written several books about Lethbridge history, even learned a lot while helping put together this exhibit.
“The people living in the neighbourhoods  changed the neighbourhoods,” Crowson observed, noting community organizations worked to plant trees and even rename neighbourhoods and streets.

“Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t she said.
“In the ’60s, students living in Hardieville being renamed,” she said.
“And people living in Parkdale were able to prevent the construction of a  grain elevator,” she said.
“You can tell people who moved here and people who grew up here from the way they speak about the neighbourhoods like the coulee bottoms. People  who were born here call the the coulee bottom  River Bottom. People who moved here call it the River Bottom,” she observed.

Home is more than a building, it’s where the heart is and where your own personal memories lie.
 That’s the idea behind the Galt Museum’s new exhibit “Recollecting home, running at the Galt Museum Feb. 1-May 5.
“ The idea is to explore different ideas of home from people in the community, ” summarized curator Aimee Benoit.
 So last year, the Galt Museum put out a call on social media for people  to select items from the Galt Museum’s archives and write a story about their personal memories of the items.

“ We got close to 60  participants. It’s similar to the Treasuries and Curiosities exhibit,”’ said  Benoit.
It is an opportunity for us to connect to the community as well as  for the community to get a behind the scenes experience,” she said.

There are several different of  similarly themed items, including  music, chores, kitchen and several other categories.

If you are curious about cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, then a new traveling exhibit opening at the Galt Museum will tell you everything you want to know and more.

“De-coding E-money” opens at the The Galt Museum on Saturday, Sept. 22 and runs until Jan. 6.

The interactive, bilingual exhibit on loan from the Bank of Canada Museum features several interactive exhibits. One shows the path different types money (including cash, cheques, credit cards, debit cards and bitcoin) takes from your pocket to the merchant.

Another shows the history of different forms of money including early band notes, bank drafts, coins and even a wooden strip used during the heyday of the fur trade. There is a quiz of your knowledge of money and another exhibit dedicated to cryptocurrency, featuring a video game  involving spotting the cryptocurrency.

There is also an interactive display about the history of different forms of payment through the years.

“ We’re really excited about this exhibit and all of the interactive displays,” said Galt Museum marketing and communications officer Graham Ruttan.
“I’m impressed with it. We’re privileged to be able to bring it here,” he continued.