After Three Long Years The Rock Island Arsenal Museum Will Finally Reopen
The Rock Island Arsenal Museum will re-open after being closed for more than three years. The museum originally opened on July 4, 1905, and is the second oldest museum in the Army.
The museum, which was scheduled to close for renovations in March 2021, closed a year earlier due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
“The museum hasn’t been renovated in more than 80 years, and we were looking to re-imagine and interpret the story we are telling to be much more Rock Island Arsenal centric and Army organic industrial-base centric to better reflect our audience,” said Patrick Allie, museum director. “This museum is going to serve as the front porch for the installation, to the larger Quad Cities public, and to the region by telling the story of what all of us do on a daily basis.”
The RIA Museum, like all Army museums, falls under the Army Museum Enterprise – an integral part of the U.S. Army Center of Military History, which oversees 30 museum activities in the U.S., Germany, and South Korea. The AME manages the Army's historic collections, consisting of nearly 550,000 artifacts, of which the RIA Museum manages approximately 7,000 to tell the story of Rock Island Arsenal.
There will be an official ribbon-cutting ceremony on June 29th at 10:00 a.m. to mark the occasion and to celebrate the return of the installation and greater Quad-Cities landmark of military history and heritage of the area.
The museum is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays – Saturdays, starting Thursday, June 29.
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