Overview

What is the biggest object at the Indiana State Museum? What is the oldest? What is the fastest? What is the most valuable?

Visitors often wonder about the most noteworthy pieces among the more than 500,000 artifacts in the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites’ collection. That curiosity became the catalyst for Museum Marvels.

For this whimsical experience, curators combed through the museum system’s collection to find the items that truly stand out. From the smallest to the largest, the most colorful to the most surprising and even the cutest to the grossest, visitors will gain a fresh and fun perspective on the collection as they explore the wonderful variety of pieces.

Museum Marvels highlights iconic artifacts that represent significant moments from Indiana's past that continue to resonate with Hoosiers today. Visitors will see Michael Jackson’s gold jacket, RCA’s beloved Nipper dog statue, former Indiana University coach Bob Knight’s red sweater and John Cougar Mellencamp’s hand-written lyrics for his hit song “Small Town.” In addition to well-known items, the exhibit also showcases fascinating but perhaps lesser-known objects like a smoking doll, the “Smiling Lincoln” painting and an original Golden Troupe costume.

Beyond the nearly 60 pieces included in the exhibit, including several that are on display for the first time, Museum Marvels features different playable experiences that offer an even deeper look inside the collection. The Artifacts to Artifacts card game challenges guests to match pictures of items to their descriptions. At the digital Museum Marvels Game Show, families and friends can compete to guess objects based on a category, visual cues and recorded clues from the game’s announcer. Plus, visitors can hear more about the Museum Marvels in a fun song that plays in the exhibit and pick up a takeaway guide that teases other noteworthy artifacts found elsewhere in the museum.