Dec. 18, 2024

By Joe Sneve, The Dakota Scout

A University of Notre Dame history gallery is the front-runner to acquire the Brockhouse taxidermy collection if the rare animal exhibits are removed from the Great Plains Zoo in Sioux Falls.

The Indiana school’s biodiversity museum is among five organizations and institutions being considered to take ownership of some or all of the Brockhouse collection that was marked for disposal 16 months ago.

The organizations expressed various interests and motivations for wanting the collection, but the Notre Dame Museum of Biodiversity earned the most attention from the work group that has been vetting options for the specimens since 2023 amid public outcry about their removal from the zoo’s Delbridge Museum of Natural History.

“Everybody knows what that is. It’s a respected institution. They obviously went through our expert report with a fine-toothed comb and knew exactly what it is and what they want,” said Jeanelle Lust, who is serving on the eight-member work group.

Lust and other members also noted the Notre Dame museum’s desire to take a majority of the collection.

In contrast, the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University wants nine specimens out of the more than 150 taxidermy mounts. The Grand Rapids Public Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is interested in 13 specimens, and the Institute for Natural History Arts in New Jersey wants 28.

The Notre Dame museum is requesting 117.

University of Notre Dame Museum of Biodiversity

While two other proposals expressed interest in the entirety of the Brockhouse collection, one does not have nonprofit status and is not eligible to be gifted the specimens by the city under state law.

And though Atlanta’s Oddities Museum has a qualifying tax status and is seeking the entire collection, work group members said more vetting of the Georgia museum would be necessary to ensure that it has the financial ability to maintain the collection.

The collection includes 53 specimens that are considered endangered, according to an independent consultant hired last year by the work group. That report estimates that restoring the collection would cost $850,000.

While the work group did not finalize a recommendation, the City Attorney’s Office was directed to craft a resolution that articulates where each of the specimens will go if Notre Dame receives the 117 in which they’ve expressed interest.

That resolution draft will be presented to the work group at a Jan. 17 meeting. That’s when members will decide what recommendations they’d like to send to the City Council, which has final say over the Brockhouse collection’s fate.

Neither The Oddities Museum nor the University of Notre Dame Museum of Biodiversity returned calls from The Dakota Scout seeking comment.

To see a summary of proposals from all entities that submitted, click here.

Following the meeting, both city councilors serving on the work group insisted that it’s still possible that the city of Sioux Falls would maintain ownership of the collection, though they acknowledge the work group hasn’t discussed that possibility in detail.

“This part of the process was to get a level of interest, to see if it was a possibility to have the collection go elsewhere,” Councilor Richard Thomason said. “Now that we have the information, we have to decide if that’s the right thing to do.”

Work group member Jeff Scherschligt said that if off-loading them is the path forward, he’s confident Notre Dame would be the best route.

“Some of the other ones were cherry-picking just a few pieces, so that doesn’t solve our bigger problem,” he said.

The Delbridge Museum abruptly closed in August 2023. At the time, zoo and city officials cited the detection of arsenic in several of the mounted animals for the closure. Many of the specimens in the collection were bagged by local businessman Henry Brockhouse in Africa during the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s and were gifted to the city in the 1980s.

The story is brought to you in partnership with The Dakota Scout, a local news source focused on government and politics. To learn more, click here.