A look at the Clark County Museum’s upcoming exhibit “How We Mourned: Selected Artifacts from the October 1 Memorials”, Mon, Sept. 24, 2018. The temporary exhibit runs from Sept. 28 through Feb. 24, 2019.
Monday, Sept. 24, 2018 | 3 p.m.
The 58 lives lost during last year’s mass shooting on the Strip resulted in more than 15,000 artifacts left at memorials across the Las Vegas area.
Clark County Museum curators today gave a preview of many of those items, presenting a year’s worth of volunteer and museum staff efforts to organize the items. They will be displayed for five months before going into storage.
The “How We Mourned” exhibit aims to educate future generations on how Las Vegas and its millions of tourists reacted to the largest mass shooting in modern American history, said museum administrator Mark Hall-Patton. The exhibit will be part of the museum’s permanent collection, meaning it will frequently re-appear on display for several months each year.
“We are mourning differently today than we mourned in the past,” Hall-Patton explained. “This is something that was an international effort that we are part of the world. It wasn’t just a localized event; we all came together.”
The artifacts, which included everything from flags, shirts, banners, signs and painted rocks, were “unique non-organic items with a personalized meaning,” Hall-Patton said. That means biodegradable items, like flower bouquets and candles, could not be included. For those items, museum curators preserved the ribbons or any personalized touches after discarding the rotted plants, and added them as part of the collection.
Curator Malcolm Vuksich said the museum’s climate-controlled storage area will allow the exhibits to be preserved long-term, and that being on display actually harms the preservation efforts. Thermal storage boxes held extra items that hadn’t yet been put on display, while polyester (not plastic) bags wrapped around other surplus items.
“We have the mindset of ‘how will this display hold up 100 years from now?,’” Vuksich said. “We want to make sure someone can come in and learn from it, and see how people mourned from this.”
The display will open to the public starting Friday. Admission is $1 for children and seniors; $2 for adults. The museum, which is located at 1830 S Boulder Highway, is open 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily.
