A museum to tell the story of St. Martin

In July, Amuseum Naturalis at The Old House celebrated one year of sharing the magic of St. Martin with visitors young and old. This is all thanks to you, our donors, and our fantastic volunteers!

Since July of 2018, the Amuseum has had over 6,000 visitors. That includes about 2,000 kids visiting with school classes or youth groups. We hosted many events, including our Endemic Animal Festival, Migratory Bird Festival and Cultural Campfire evenings.

When we opened a year ago, we featured the exhibits from our pop-up museum in Grand Case. Since then, we’ve added over 60 exhibit panels about nature, history, culture, farming, bush medicine and many other topics. We are well on our way to being the best place in the world to learn about St. Martin!

We are closed for a summer break, but when we reopen this fall, we have big plans. We will continue to build our research library, Soualibra. We will also be adding many new exhibits and signs. These will include St. Martiners who made a difference on the island, the heritage of French Quarter (the town where we are located), and many other topics. We will also be hosting our 7th annual Migratory Bird Festival.

Thanks again for your support! We literally could not have done this without you. We also welcome additional donations that can help us continue to offer something very special on St. Martin.

Links:

• Amuseum Naturalis at the Old House.
• Soualibra, our new research library.
• Seegrape: videos from St. Martin and the Caribbean.

Thanks to your support, Amuseum Naturalis gets more awesome every day. Over the past few months, we’ve developed new exhibits and started new projects. More importantly, we’ve shared the magic of St. Martin with many people of all ages.

We finished our outdoor signage project, which was financed with funds from France and funds from you. We added over 60 new signs telling stories about plants and animals, history, agriculture, bush medicine, architecture and more. This transforms the entire space around the buildings into a place to learn new things about St. Martin.

We launched Soualibra, a research library focused on St. Martin. After all public libraries on the island closed, we knew we needed to help fill in the gap they left. By focusing on St. Martin, Soualibra is valuable today and will still offer something special when regular libraries reopen.

We had fantastic events at the Amuseum where people came together to learn and share. Our Endemic Animal Festival and International Museum Day events were amazing. They were also events where guests could come to learn, but also share their knowledge and stories about the island. By recording oral histories, we can help preserve and share this cultural information.

We look forward to continuing this amazing project! Your support has helped make sure we have the resources we need to support our amazing volunteers. Your donations have also provided the matching funds that we needed to get grant funding for projects. This has made a huge difference in the experience we can offer at the Amuseum.

We are grateful for your help and we welcome your continued support. As always, we hope you can come for a visit in person! If not, please visit us online or on social media to see some of the magic that you have helped put into the world!

Links:

• Get a taste of our Endemic Animal Festival.
• Recent articles about the project and our association.
• Follow us on instagram to see what we're doing.