BROOKINGS – After being COVID-closed for more than a year, the Brookings County Museum’s governing board has voted to return to its traditional summer season beginning Sunday, May 30. 

Beginning that Memorial Day weekend and thereafter, the six-building complex in Volga’s City Park will be open seven days a week from 1-4 p.m. daily. Admission is free. COVID protocols will be recommended. 

The museum board of directors also set May 15 for what they describe as the museum’s largest yard sale since the museum was established in the Brookings County Courthouse in 1939.

Shirley Deethardt of Aurora, museum volunteer and co-president, said the yard sale will be “gigantic, with hundreds of objects to be sold.” The museum’s closure during the epidemic provided the opportunity to review items shelved in two museum storage areas, and two off- campus storage facilities, one of which was a rental unit, she said.

Discovered during that year-long housecleaning were duplicate artifacts, damaged artifacts and other objects unsuitable for museum display, plus items difficult to display or unrelated to the history of Brookings County.  

Deethardt said the review has resulted in a reduction of storage to just two areas rather than four.

“We found a little bit of everything,” she said. “One of the most unusual is a large, pre-World War II, blue glass Japanese fishing net float. Another eye catcher having no direct relationship to Brookings County is an old Union Pacific Railroad poster featuring a photograph of what the poster claimed was the last buffalo.” 

Also set aside for sale are old books, documents, kitchenware, tools, shelving, decorative old chandeliers and glassware, plus much more.  

“All of it, including the accumulation of flotsam and jetsam a museum naturally gathers over eight decades, has been collecting dust for decades while taking up costly and potentially good museum display space,” Deethardt said

It is fairly common for museums to periodically deaccession items, she noted.  “In our case, the May 15 yard sale will be a first try at deaccessioning.”