High Desert Museum, Art museum in Deschutes County, United States.
The High Desert Museum is a natural history and art museum in Deschutes County, Oregon, set on a large wooded property with both indoor galleries and outdoor exhibits. It covers natural history, Native American heritage, and contemporary art of the Pacific Northwest, and also keeps live animals in outdoor habitats on site.
The museum opened in 1982 with a focus on documenting the natural and human history of the high desert region of the Pacific Northwest. Over time it grew to add art collections and Native American cultural objects, broadening its scope well beyond its original natural history focus.
The museum shows work by artists connected to the High Desert and places their pieces alongside natural history objects, so the two feel related rather than separate. Walking through, you get a sense of how the land has shaped the way people in this region see and make things.
The museum has both indoor and outdoor sections, so comfortable shoes and a few hours are a good idea before you arrive. The outdoor paths wind through wooded grounds and can take as long as the galleries themselves, depending on how much time you spend at each stop.
The museum holds an original 19th-century stagecoach that once ran routes across the Pacific Northwest, displayed in a walk-around setting rather than behind glass. Standing next to it makes the scale and the difficulty of travel in that era much easier to appreciate than a photo ever could.
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