With the cool March day, and spring still not yet blooming, we decided to spend the day at a few local museums that I have been planning on going to.
The Jack Nicklaus Museum is on the West Campus of Ohio State, near Schottenstein Arena. While well done, it doesn’t appear to have been updated since it’s opening years ago. The time we were there nobody else came in.
The museum focuses on his youth in Upper Arlington, his accomplishments, with a nice collection of trophies, courses he designed, a small section on other golf legends, and a section for Ohio State golf. All in all it was ok for it’s $10 admission price, but not one of the better ones.
The Decorative Arts Center in Lancaster is located in a mid 1800s house, with period pieces on the first floor. The second floor has rotating exhibits, when we were there the display was A Tradition of Progress, Ohio Decorative Arts 1860-1945. The items displayed were made in Ohio during that period, a time when America was going through mechanization.
The display emphasizes items that the emerging middle class would have purchase, sometimes practical, often just for display. The highlight were items from the Arts and Crafts movement, including some wonderful chairs, and pottery from Rookwood, Roseville and Weller.
The Ohio Glass Museum is located in an old bank on Main Street, in the middle of some small shops, and vacant buildings.
They pay tribute to the primary industry of my hometown, glassmaking. Among the displays were a collection of items used in glassmaking, the ‘Treasures of Ohio’ collection of some fine art glass, and a large collection of Degenhart Glass in the lower level
The best display was filled with TV tubes, medical equipment, tail light fixtures, and other ‘every day’ uses like exit signs, turn signals and streetlight covers that when they were produced in the early 1900s, were down with mouth blown tools.
RDZ Photography 