Exhibits

Step into three-dimensional re-creations of historic photographs complete with characters that come to life in You Are There, or take virtual journeys throughout the state in Destination Indiana, or pull up a stool at the cabaret and immerse yourself in the music of Hoosier legend Cole Porter in the Cole Porter Room.

Current Exhibits

Now open – Going Pro, Basketball Origins in Indiana is the latest exhibit to showcase Indiana’s game and its impact on professional sports. Visitors will experience many of the stories of iconic games, teams and players through amazing photographs, one-of-a-kind artifacts and a digital media experience that will bring these stories to life like never before. The exhibit continues through February 2024.

Now open – Chuck Taylor All Star. In many ways, Indiana represents the heart of basketball in the United States. Its history has no shortage of iconic moments or people who are famous for changing or contributing to the game, such as Oscar Robertson, John Wooden and Larry Bird. One Hoosier devoted his life to the game whose name nearly every basketball fan in the United States knows, with his fame extending beyond the bounds of basketball. Though few know much about him, the man is Charles Hollis Taylor, better known as “Chuck” Taylor — the man behind the name on that famous shoe — the Converse All Star. The Chuck Taylor All Star exhibit is open through January 27, 2025.

Now open – Eva Kor from Auschwitz to Indiana. Learn the remarkable story of Eva Mozes Kor, who survived Auschwitz as a child and the experiments of Dr. Joseph Mengele, and grew up to be one of the most influential Holocaust educators and activists in the world. She ignited a global manhunt for Mengele, organized other survivors, and educated millions about what happened during the Holocaust and about her vision of empowerment and forgiveness. The exhibit is open through August 2024.

Now open – Dimensions in Testimony. This interactive feature allows visitors to take advantage of advanced filming techniques to have inviting one-on-one conversations with Eva Kor – a Holocaust survivor and eyewitness to history. On loan from CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center, USC Shoah Foundation’s Dimensions in Testimony allows visitors to converse with an interactive biography of Eva via a hologram-like projection. Guests can hear her personal testimony and ask questions that are of interest to them — learning more about her story in her own words. Dimensions in Testimony is open through August 2024.

Now open – Rivers, Rails and Roads. People have traveled across Indiana for thousands of years. Before and just after contact with Europeans, Indigenous peoples connected their communities with networks of rivers and trails. With European explorers, fur traders and settlers came new vehicles of transport, such as flatboats, keelboats and horse-, mule- or oxen-drawn carriages and wagons. In the 1800s, steamboats became a popular and more convenient form of river travel. This new exhibit showcases sketches, photographs and maps to illustrate the changes in transportation over time as well as first-person texts and oral histories that explain what it was like to use and work for various modes of transportation. Rivers, Rails and Roads is open through October 2023.

The Past in Our Present

Focusing on the way history can help us understand our present is the purpose of our gallery exhibit called The Past in Our Present. The gallery contains frequently-rotating materials reflecting current events — showing the timely nature of what some would deem ancient history. The current exhibit, located in the Herbst Family Gallery, explores the topic of inflation. While we hear about inflation on an almost daily basis and feel it each time we visit the grocery store and gas pump, many of us know little about how it has affected the United States in the past, its evolving definition or the role Hoosiers played reacting to inflation in the past. The exhibit closes on Oct. 28, 2023.

Cole Porter Room

Come into the Cole Porter Room – designed to evoke the style of New York’s famed Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

W. Brook and Wanda Y. Fortune History Lab

In the History Lab, go behind the scenes of a real conservation lab and explore the technology used to preserve the IHS collection.