Ancestral Puebloan Artifacts were Displayed at the 1893 World's Fair

Prehistoric Ancestral Puebloan bowl and
mug were on display at the LDS Church
History Museum, January 2016.

This prehistoric Ancestral Puebloan bowl and mug were on display in the Utah Pavilion at the Columbian Exposition (aka, the 1893 World’s Fair) in Chicago 1893. 

The booklet behind the pottery describes the exhibits of the Utah Pavilion. At the time, these two items were a part of the collections of the Deseret Museum of Salt Lake City.

The Deseret Museum was Utah’s first museum which opened in December 1869. The Utah Territorial Legislature declined to support the museum, so it was largely a private institution run at an economic loss of its founders and curators. It originally included a live animal menagerie and focused on taxidermized animals, geologic specimens, and archaeological materials.

The Deseret Museum originally occupied an adobe house located near the present-day site of Hotel Utah. The museum moved to several larger locations throughout downtown Salt Lake City until 1918 when the museum closed.

Following its closing, the collections of the Deseret Museum were divided among several museums and institutions of Utah including Brigham Young University, University of Utah, Daughters of Utah Pioneers, and the LDS Church History Museum.

The two Ancestral Puebloan artifacts shown here are in the collections of the LDS Church History Museum (as of Jan 2016).

Source of text: Eubanks, Lila Carpenter. "The Deseret Museum." Utah Historical Quarterly 50, no. 4 (Fall 1982): 361-76.