Palo Alto History Museum

Programs: Fundraising to build palo alto's first local history museumcreating a new long-needed community resource, we are excited to develop a world-class museum which will provide much to our community, including:- a free cultural destination in the heart of palo alto, with innovative exhibitions, programs and resources to tell the stories of our palo alto-stanford community, and our legacy of innovation and far-reaching impact. - a teaching location and resource for students and teachers on state and local history. Classroom tours will enrich the curriculum for students from palo alto, stanford and east palo alto, whether public, private or home-schooled. - preservation of a community treasure, the roth building, now on the national register. Designed by the local architect synonymous with palo alto, birge clark, we will also preserve the murals by victor arnautoff, best known for his work at coit tower. - a climate-controlled repository for artifacts and documents currently scattered throughout our community, preserving our unique local history. We will create a media center and be the permanent home for the city archives. The museum will be a unique venue for events and a large meeting room will be available for use by this community.

educational community programsmeaningful programs on historic topics of public interest exceeded expectations and brought out hundreds of new as well as current supporters. We partnered with the palo alto medical foundation for a presentation on the history of the clinic, which at its founding in the 1930's challenged conventional doctoring to create a collaborative health services clinic and which is today the model for the health services industry. We hosted the first-ever palo alto screening of a documentary about "the wave" - a 1967 cubberley hs classroom expiriment. This project has traveled the globe illustrating how fascism can happen in any country, in any area, at any time. "the third wave [is] known everywhere but in the united states and especially here in the bay area, where the expiriment took place. " sam whiting, san francisco chronicle, 1-20-2010. And we aren't doing this alone. Our sponsors and community partners the palo alto human relations commission, pausd, paha, palo alto library, midpen media center, and the league of women voters helped make this success possible.

collection, archives & exhibition planningwhat will you see in the new museum? Introduced at our standing-room-only donor appreciation event, our cutting-edge vision of interactive galleries will personalize the museum experience with innovative curation of historical monuments in palo alto history. Our goal is to inspire community involvement and participation, attracting not only our local history makers, but also the next generation's. Now online: check out the new video library page of our refreshed and maximized website. View the pamf and wave programs or take a virtual tour of the roth bldg, thanks to the recording crew from the mid-peninsula media center. Enjoy micro-documentaries on the city as history, our trees, the importance of art in palo alto and how the museum will aid teaching history in public schools. In partnership with the city and palo alto historical association, we continue to acquire and preserve artifacts and archival materials and respond to inquiries from the public who are curious about our history.