FAYETTEVILLE (KFSM)-- Thursday (Mar. 30) night, the University of Arkansas Museum Collections opened its vault of artifacts for the public.
The open house was a part of Arkansas Archaeology Month.
The items on display included Native American pottery, taxidermy animals and statues made of milk glass.
Shelby Dye is a senior at the university studying biological anthropology.
She said she was very excited to witness the public interacting with these items.
“It’s exciting to see the public come in and be interested and have questions and have concern for the items that we’re showing and the things that we are talking about," said Dye. "That’s really refreshing."
Thousands of items fill the the building but many of them would never be seen by the public in an average museum.
“They only have like two to five percent of their collections on exhibit and the rest of them are in storage," said Curator of Collections Mary Suter. "And that’s where we are. Since we don’t have an exhibit, all of our collections are in storage.”
Even though they may be out of the public's reach, many people like Dye are still learning from these artifacts.
Curator of Zoology Nancy McCartney described their collection as the time machine.
She explained many of these items may not appear to be important but could hold the answers to questions years down the line.