Park City Museum Opens Parade Exhibit to Mark America's 250th Birthday

The Park City Museum unveiled "Park City Loves a Parade: Our Parades, Processions and Protests from Past to Present" on March 13, opening a 13-month exhibition in the Tozer Gallery that will run through April 4, 2027. The exhibit was built entirely in-house by the museum's team over two and a half years, timed to coincide with the United States' 250th birthday, known formally as the Semiquincentennial.

Rather than surveying the national milestone from a distance, the exhibit trains its lens squarely on Park City, tracing how Parkites have taken to the streets in moments of celebration, grief, and civic conviction. "Park City Loves a Parade will take visitors on an emotional journey through Park City's history by exploring how Parkites have demonstrated our community's various values and viewpoints with public outdoor gatherings of parades, processions and protests," the museum writes, framing the project as an examination of "the commonalities and differences that make us both Parkites and participants in 'The Great Experiment.'"

The exhibit includes multiple interactive components, slideshows, a film, and several immersive elements. It also draws on photographs, objects, and archival materials from the museum's permanent collection, many of which have never previously been on public display. The museum describes the experience as a journey from "our legendary Fourth of July origins to our modern-day civic engagement," inviting visitors to consider both the nostalgia of Park City's past and the present-day power of community action.

The new exhibit arrives after a busy 2025 for the museum, which hosted three traveling exhibitions: "Graveyard of Buoyant Hopes: Ghost Towns & Relics of the American West," "Two Minutes to Midnight and the Architecture of Armageddon," and "The Perfect Shot: Walter Iooss Jr. and the Art of Sports Photography." The annual Glenwood Cemetery event, themed "Death and Disaster: Terrible Ways to Die!," drew visitors to that historic site, and summer tours of Glenwood proved popular enough to become one of the year's standout programs.

Looking beyond the new exhibit, the museum also has major construction work ahead. According to the Park Record, 2026 will bring significant improvements to the Thaynes Mine headframe building, the structure where the Skier Subway experience once let out. Dalton Gackle serves as the museum's research coordinator.

"Park City Loves a Parade" is now open in the Tozer Gallery and remains on view through April 4, 2027.