History Hunter: Museum Vault Tours August 17, 2007

Museum curators lead behind-the-scenes tours through the museum's "vault," an underground climate-controlled preservation center that is home to more than 100,000 artifacts. Curators will offer entertaining and educational presentations about the artifacts, the stories they hold about Iowa's rich history, and how the museum collects, catalogs, preserves, studies, cares for, and displays them. Or take a tour of the Museum's Battle Flag Preservation Lab where you'll see Iowa's historic battle flag collection that includes 317 flags borne by Iowa regiments and batteries during the Civil War, Spanish America War and World War I, the vast majority of which were last seen by the public in the 1890s. Since then, sunlight, smoke, and heavy gauze used to support each flag has caused damage, some of it severe.