By Kate Moore
Public Museum’s Vice President of Marketing and Public Relations
Join the Grand Rapids Public Museum (GRPM) on Feb. 3 to celebrate two exciting events, the opening of the new exhibit Water’s Extreme Journey and the 2018 Ethnic Heritage Festival.
Water’s Extreme Journey lets visitors become a water droplet to explore the watershed and learn about why conservation of water is so important.
Ethnic Heritage Festival is a day-long celebration of music, dance, crafts and food representing the various ethnic groups that call West Michigan home.
New Exhibit – Water’s Extreme Journey
In Water’s Extreme Journey, visitors will explore firsthand the science behind the water cycle. Through powerful interactives and local messaging, visitors realize that daily decisions can immediately improve the watershed in their own backyard.
Water’s Extreme Journey transforms the visitor into a drop of water entering a watershed, an area of land where water drains and collects into a shared reservoir. As visitors will discover, a watershed can be right in their own neighborhood, or as big as the Rocky Mountain region.
To explore the exhibition watershed, visitors voyage through rivers, lakes, wetlands, and even their homes, eventually reaching the healthy ocean. Water drops face many hurdles as they interact with humans. Does the farm they encounter use pesticides? Did someone get messy changing their oil? Clean choices keep our drops healthy and moving toward a clean ocean. Dirty choices send our drops down the urban storm drain to the unhealthy ocean, where they evaporate, condensate, and precipitation for another try.
The GRPM is adding a special addition to the exhibit all about the Grand River restoration. Six banners will show and tell you all about the Grand River, including the history of where the rapids went and the future plans for the river.
Admission to Water’s Extreme Journey and Ethnic Heritage Festival is free with general admission to the GRPM.
Museum members can be the first to see the new exhibit at the members only preview on Friday, Feb. 2, from 5 to 8 p.m. Members can RSVP for the member preview at grpm.org/Water.
Water’s Extreme Journey is sponsored by Meijer and Star 105.7.
This exhibit is brought to you by the citizens of Kent County and the voter approved millage.
Ethnic Heritage Festival
Ethnic Heritage Festival begins at 10 a.m. Feb. 3 and features a variety of organizations, performances, beer tastings and presentations. The Museum Café will feature ethnic food selections and there will be a special International Beer Tasting from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. in the Museum. Event activities are included with general admission to the Museum. The International Beer Tasting is an additional $5 and open to those 21 and over. Tickets for the International Beer Tasting will be available for purchase at the Museum’s front desk on the day of the event.
The City of Grand Rapids and the surrounding region have a long standing history of diversity and various cultural traditions dating back from early explorers and fur traders, to modern day cultural rituals from new residents of the region.
Each booth will have various activities and displays for visitors to see and touch, learning more about each culture. Colorful performances will take place throughout the day in the Meijer Theater starting at 10 a.m.
The GRPM hosts two core exhibitions having a primary focus on diversity and culture: Newcomers: The People of This Place which highlights the ethnic groups that have settled the Grand Rapids area, and Anishinabek: The People of this Place which focuses on the Native American culture in the region.
