(Sky Hunters — Barn Owl | Photo courtesy of High Desert Museum)
The High Desert Museum will kick off spring break with special programs and extended hours from Saturday, March 19 through Sunday, March 27, 9am-5pm. Visitors pay winter rates with summer hours through Thursday, March 31. It’s all made possible by Oregon College Savings Plan.
The popular indoor flight demonstration Sky Hunters returns inside the E.L. Wiegand Pavilion after a two-year hiatus. Visitors can experience powerful predators close-up as raptors fly just overhead and Museum wildlife specialists showcase the birds’ agility and grace. The program runs from Saturday, March 19-Saturday, March 26 with demonstrations daily at 11am and 1:30pm. Tickets are $5 and available at Admissions. Museum members receive a 20 percent discount. Sky Hunters is possible with support from Bigfoot Beverages.
“It’s a special spring break with Sky Hunters returning to our schedule for the week,” said Museum Executive Director Dana Whitelaw, Ph.D. “Sky Hunters is just one of the many awe-inspiring experiences visitors can enjoy. They can also take in our new, original exhibit Imagine a World and interpretive talks all day long.”
The festivities truly start on Wednesday, March 16 with Senior Day. Visitors 65 and older are invited to enjoy the day with free admission. Senior Day is made possible by Mid Oregon Credit Union and T-Mobile.
On Saturday, March 19 from 11am-1pm, visitors can stop in the Spirit of the West Silver City scene and experience what school was like in the program Go to School in 1885. A living history interpreter will share lessons and artifacts that give visitors a taste of what education was like during that time period.
In Imagine a World, visitors can explore the ambitions, intentions and outcomes of utopian and intentional communities across the West, from the domes of Biosphere 2 to Central Oregon’s Rajneeshpuram. Through an interactive element, Imagine a World gives visitors the opportunity to articulate what kind of world we want to live in for the future. Learn more at highdesertmuseum.org/imagine-a-world.
And spring break visitors can get a last glimpse of Carrying Messages: Native Runners, Ancestral Homelands and Awakening, closing Sunday, April 3. The exhibit highlights the historical significance of running in Native cultures in the Western United States and the ways that some Native people today are drawing on running as a means of empowerment, sovereignty and cultural revitalization. Learn more at highdesertmuseum.org/carrying-messages.
The Museum also has on display another temporary exhibition, X-Ray Vision: Fish Inside Out. From the Smithsonians’s National Museum of Natural History, the exhibit shares a natural world of wonderful complexity through black-and-white digital prints of different fish species. The ethereal imagery demonstrates the natural unity of science and art. More information on the Museum’s temporary and permanent exhibitions is available at highdesertmuseum.org/exhibitions.
About The Museum:
The High Desert Museum opened in Bend in 1982. It brings together wildlife, cultures, art, history and the natural world to convey the wonder of North America’s High Desert. The Museum is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, is a Smithsonian Affiliate, was the 2019 recipient of the Western Museums Association’s Charles Redd Award for Exhibition Excellence and was a 2021 recipient of the National Medal for Museum and Library Service.