Great Falls residents had a chance to visit almost a dozen museums for this year's Sunday Sampler and the chance to learn more about the museums and win prizes.
Participating museums:
- Ursuline Center(2300 Central Avenue)
- Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art (1400 First Avenue North)
- Montana Museum of Railroad History (400 3rd Street Northwest)
- Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center (4201 Giant Springs Road)
- The History Museum (422 2nd Street South)
- Galerie Trinitas (1301 20th Street South)
- First People's Buffalo Jump State Park (342 Ulm-Vaughn Road, Ulm, MT)
- C.M. Russell Museum (400 13th Street North)
- Children's Museum of Montana (22 Railroad Square)
- Malmstrom Air Force Base Museum (Malmstrom AFB)
- Great Falls Public Library (301 2nd Avenue North)
The event is designed to get people out to see what Great Falls museums have to offer to the community. Each museum, including host Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art, had a few questions about each museum to answer as attendance for many museums went up during the weekend.
"We've had great attendance, quite a bit more than than a usual weekend day," Brent Viste of the Square said. "It's been great so far. The sampler has been going on for a while and we usually get a lot of people we don't normally see."
Each museum has their own specialty and they all partnered together, encouraging participants to visit at least three museums for the scavenger hunt.
"We're free every day, but we're not always open on Sunday, so it's a fantastic time to just go explore what Great Falls has to offer," History Museum archive administrator Megan Sanford said. "There's just too much history in Great Falls to be confined to one museum. And the weather is beautiful too. You just got to get out and see it."
All the museums offered free admission to encourage more visitors and showcase a museum or exhibit people might not have known about.
"Museums are important for preserving cultural history, anthropology," Viste added. "We, of course, specialize in contemporary art. So we support artists. We support the arts helping culture expand that way."
