Exhibits

Browse Our Exhibits

This video is a 360° view of the interior of the Norwegian House, on the first floor of the museum’s Main Building. When watching a 360° video on a computer, the viewing angle is changed by clicking on the video and dragging with the mouse. Enjoy the virtual tour!

Our Main Building

Step inside Vesterheim’s Main Building to discover four floors filled with stories of identity, beauty, and faith. The lives of the people who settled our nation were often as colorful as their folk art and their stories speak through the objects they left behind. You’ll find a cabin made from a single tree, elaborate costumes, intricately carved butter molds, colorful paintings, silver wedding crowns, woven tapestries, and even a boat that sailed the Atlantic Ocean.

Vesterheim’s Main Building includes artifacts from home life in nineteenth-century Norway, a 25-foot wooden sailboat TradeWind, an immigrant log house from 1853, and thousands of examples of Norwegian and Norwegian-American materials. You will enjoy displays of folk art that range from centuries-old woodcarving to beautiful contemporary rosemaling (decorative painting). Learn about Norwegian traditions and follow the immigrant story to see how Norwegian-Americans sustained and shared their heritage in their vesterheim, their “western home.”

This video is a 360° view of the interior of the ship gallery, on the first floor of the museum’s Main Building. When watching a 360° video on a computer, the viewing angle is changed by clicking on the video and dragging with the mouse. Enjoy the virtual tour!

This video is a 360° view of the interior of a gallery featuring wood and its decoration, on the second floor of the museum’s Main Building. When watching a 360° video on a computer, the viewing angle is changed by clicking on the video and dragging with the mouse. Enjoy the virtual tour!

Heritage Park

Vesterheim Heritage Park on Vesterheim’s campus includes 12 historic buildings in an open-air setting. The buildings depict the story of immigration, showcasing life in Norway in the 1800s and then life for immigrants in America. The park is a forested area, interspersed with glade-like openings that act as outdoor rooms. There is a welcome patio that includes a brick outline of the Restauration, the first ship to bring Norwegian immigrants across the Atlantic. There is a timber frame meeting area for groups and Folk Art School classes, and also an outdoor stone amphitheater for performances. Carved portals mark the entrances to the park and visitors are invited to wander through time, past and present, along the pathways and plantings.

The park is open daily. Enjoy a guided tour of the museum’s Heritage Park during the summer months. (Please call ahead to confirm in case of tour change.)

Learn the history and check out the 360° views of the room interiors on each building page.

Learn more about Vesterheim’s Heritage Park with this blog post and this magazine article interview with previous Vesterheim director and curator Darrell Henning.

Heritage Park would not be possible without some exceptional partners — Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies, Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship’s Water Quality Initiative Urban Conservation Project, the Paul D. Pratt and Marguerite Olson Pratt Fund of InFaith Community Foundation, and Kate Nelson Rattenborg. Vesterheim has also received funding from Winneshiek County Community Foundation and Humanities Iowa for interpretive signs.