Lacombe Museum celebrates Michener House grand re-opening

The Lacombe Museum celebrated the grand re-opening of the Michener House Museum on May 25, after a year-long renovation and modernization project.

The re-opening also celebrated 130 years since the house was built, and 40 years since the Michener House was opened to the public as a museum.

“Hopefully all who pass through the doors feel that it was an appropriate birthday gift for us to give to this site, which has witnessed the development of Lacombe since our inception as a settlement,” said Samantha Lee, Interim Executive Director at the Lacombe Museum.

She explained that some of the changes made inside the house were quite subtle, with repaired plaster, new paint, and reinstated overhead lighting. While other changes were more drastic, such as reopening a doorway that has been closed since the 1980s, and uncovering and refinishing the original hardwood flooring from 1918.

For the past 40 years, the displays in the house were relatively unchanged, and the public could only freely access the 1894 edition of the house.

While the 1894 edition continues to focus mostly on the building's history as the Methodist Church, and on the history of the Michener family themselves, new display areas in the 1918 edition focus on the development of early Lacombe.

“We now have the capacity to share more stories and to share more about what makes Lacombe a vibrant and diverse place to live,” Lee said. “Some areas in the house were redesigned with the future in mind as we do not want another 40 years to go by before an update.”

Lacombe Museum Michener House Museum tour.

Throughout the house, themes were chosen that can be easily added to, or modified to ensure the house remains interesting and engaging to the public and enable the Lacombe Museum to continue adding stories that are important to the community.

“I hope that the breath of fresh air we've breathed into the Michener House is palpable,” Lee said.

She added that it was important the Lacombe Museum made the changes to the Michener House, to ensure the building wasn’t a static, old, musty museum.

“We didn't want to hear anymore that it looked the same as when somebody had been here on their Grade 3 field trip, which is a common comment we used to get,” Lee said. “The immediate change will help prevent that, but also integrating things that are meant to change means that the house can grow with Lacombe when it couldn’t do that at all before.”

Without the support from the federal and provincial governments, the City of Lacombe, and the Lacombe Museum staff who were involved in the project, the upgrades wouldn’t have been possible.