Rexburg museum staff cataloging 6,000 items as city and volunteers hunt for storage and a new exhibit space

Alicia (Museum curator, City of Rexburg) told the council during a work session that her team has photographed and catalogued the museum collection and archived more than 6,000 artifacts, and boxed about 3,500 items as the city prepares to remove collections from the Tabernacle for upcoming HVAC work.

Why it matters: The Teton Dam flood’s 50th anniversary is next year, and staff say they need a place for a flood exhibit and for regular rotating displays. Without accessible storage and exhibit space, the museum cannot rotate objects or host interactive, family-oriented programming staff say would attract repeat visitors.

Alicia described the inventory effort and the immediate storage need. “As of Friday, we had archived over 6,000 items and have packed almost, as of today, 3,500 items,” she said. She estimated the collection needs about 2,000–3,000 square feet of climate‑treated, accessible storage now; an ideal new museum with larger exhibit space would be…