Museum Minute: How A Museum Decides What To Collect

The Cody Firearms Museum has over 7,000 firearms in the collection. So are they looking to add anything to the collection?

Danny Michael, the curator of the museum, said yes, “but we tend to be really, really selective.”

Michael said the mission of the museum is to interpret all of firearms history. 

“So in that way, we can kind of justify anything from a hand cannon to, you know, something like a very modern 3d printed firearm, since that’s been in the news lately.”

But they do still need to be conscious of what they can care for, manage and make sure to be good stewards of the collection they have already. Plus, when it comes to certain topics, Michael said the collection is already pretty well represented.

“We end up turning away a lot of things because we already have it. A good reference point would be, since we have the Winchester Arms Collection, we have Winchester history really well represented. So it has to be a really, really unusual Winchester for us to bring it in,” he said. 

But when other firearms manufacturers are not as well represented, Micheal said they may take something that’s a bit more common. 

Museum Minute was a series co-produced with Wyoming Public Media (WPM).