^{Charles R. Conner Museum}

Exhibits

Where and What

Page last updated July 13, 2021

The Conner Museum public exhibit is open to the public and is free. It occupies several rooms at the south end of the first floor of Abelson Hall. Click here for more visitor information.

The exhibit features several hundred taxidermy mounts of birds and mammals, most from the Pacific Northwest. It is a popular destination for school field trips and campus visitors. One of its most important functions is for WSU education. Several undergraduate classes incorporate a visit to the museum as part of their labs.

Hallway Displays

Several exhibits line the hallway at the south end of the museum. On one side of the hallway is a deer exhibit with mounts of deer species that occur in the region, including a moose. The other side of the hallway has smaller exhibits featuring skeletons, fossils, and the paleoartist Charles Knight.

Moose mount — Moose looking out of the deer herd display in the hallway.

East Gallery

The East Gallery is the largest of the three Museum rooms. Most of the East Gallery displays feature birds, arranged more or less in taxonomic groups.

The biggest display in the East Gallery is a Bighorn Sheep quartet in the middle of the room. Other displays feature Mountain Goats, Pronghorn, and the science of Ancient DNA.

Fur touch table — Most museum displays are strictly “Look, but don’t touch.” The “Touch Table” in the East gallery is the exception. Visitors are encouraged to touch the different types of fur on the table.

West Gallery

Most of the exhibits in the West Gallery are mammals. The biggest mount is the bison in the corner of the room. Other displays include a gray wolf, cougars, and beavers. A few displays feature birds, including penguins and cranes.

The Bison mount lived in a tavern before it was donated to the Museum.

Wolf display — Wolf mount. Longtime curator George Hudson mounted this large wolf from Canada.

North Gallery

The North Gallery features exhibits about evolution and adaptation. It also includes our popular dinosaur exhibit.

Aardvark mount — A is for Aardvark. Check out those toenails. What do you suppose they are for?

Dinosaur cast of a large hadrosaurid species, *Prosaurolophus maximus*. It is a full-scale cast of a skeleton found in Canada.

Owen Science Library

If you have time, visit the Owen Science Library, just south of Abelson Hall, to view a few more Museum displays. There is a large mounted Brown Bear on the first floor and several display cases of exhibits on the second floor.