History Museum at the Castle

The History Museum at the Castle will fabricate a permanent exhibition dedicated to the history of the Fox River Valley in northeast Wisconsin. Featured exhibit topics will include the colonization of the ancestral homelands of the Menominee and Ho-Chunk people; racism in Appleton and its legacy as a de facto sundown town; the role of local Fox Cities resident Senator Joseph McCarthy in forming a toxic populist movement; and the stories of Hmong refugees that sought asylum in the Fox Cities as a result of the Vietnam War. The resulting exhibit will give an honest and inclusive account while challenging museumgoers to consider how past personal choices and collective decisions have shaped the present.