Ohio History Center

Explore Ohio’s rich natural history through the themes of plants, animals, geology, geography and climate. In this exhibit you will find artefacts ranging from rocks and minerals to taxidermy mounts of locally extinct animals. Look for the massive Conway, a reconstructed Ice age mastodon skeleton, at the entrance of the exhibit!

View conserved battle flags carried by Ohioans during the Civil War and learn more about the conflict that split the country apart from 1861-1865. Artefacts you will also see in this exhibit include photographs, weapons and other items carried by soldiers during the war.

Fully immerse yourself in mid-century American life! 1950s – Building the American Dream features a fully furnished, reconstructed Lustron home that you can explore and investigate. When you are done exploring the Lustron house you can learn more about the 1950s through videos and panels featuring the recollections of Ohioans who grew up in the era.

Historic preservation is about protecting, promoting and using historic places. It's also about the power of place—places that matter because they help tell the story of our state and our nation, of who we are and where we come from. Learn the history of the preservation movement in the United States and Ohio, and how the State Historic Preservation Office works with people throughout our state to identify and protect Ohio’s historic places.

Learn more about some of Ohio’s extensive history in this varied gallery. Collections in Ohio Through Time include an open storage display of kitchenware items, early transportation and farming in the state, a World War I era collections display and Creative Ohio, an exhibit dedicated to four different Ohio artists.

Gallery 2 presents a stunning visual display of beautifully crafted furniture and unique pottery and glassware pieces. These artefacts are arranged in an open storage setting, which allows visitors to see more of the collection compared to a typical museum exhibit!

It's not an exhibit—it's an experiment! Traditional museum exhibits only display a small portion of a museum’s collection. In our Great Collections Experiment we're trying out new ways of displaying and sharing more of the amazing and sometimes quirky objects in our vast collection. While conventional exhibits usually tell a story about an event or a time period, this gallery focuses on displaying beautiful and intriguing objects and leave the storytelling up to you.

Discover some of the vast earthworks that American Indian people built 2,000 years ago. Our new exhibit, Indigenous Wonders of Our World—The Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, explores eight ancient earthworks in Ohio that are Ohio's first World Heritage Sites on the United Nations’ World Heritage List, a list of the world’s greatest wonders.

In this interactive exhibit, learn how ancient American Indians employed astronomy and geometry to align the earthworks with cycles of the sun and moon, see 2,000-year old artifacts that suggest what people did at these sacred sites and leave with a new appreciation for eight extraordinary landmarks in our midst.