Peoria Riverfront Museum

The Peoria Riverfront Museum is a privately funded, non-profit museum of art, science, and history overlooking the Illinois River in downtown Peoria, Illinois. The museum provided 180,000 visitor experiences in fiscal year 2016-17.

Containing a planetarium, a giant screen theater, exhibits, collections, educational classes, and public outreach, the museum opened on October 20, 2012.^[1] A specialty resource of the museum is the "Illinois River Encounter," a family-oriented gallery that attempts to be the definitive aquarium of the Illinois River, which flows adjacent to the museum. Adjacent displays describe the ecology, social history, and engineering of the working river.^[2]

The museum's collections include fine art (paintings, sculptures, works on paper), decorative art (furniture, ceramics, metal, glass, textiles), folk art (paintings, sculptures, graphics, decorative arts, etc.), ethnographic art (Native American, African, Oceanic, Asian), natural science artifacts (rocks and minerals, insects, shells), and historic artifacts including a Duryea Motor Wagon Company car, theater and opera posters, and square dancing items.^[3]

The Peoria Riverfront Museum serves as a successor to Lakeview Museum of Arts and Sciences, which was founded by private citizens in 1965 and whose building was then given to and maintained by the Peoria Park District while its operations remained entirely private. Lakeview Museum was located in the north central suburban Lakeview Park in Peoria. It was also home to more than 50 member clubs, hobby groups, and organizations who formed an independent arts and sciences council whose members had helped start the museum.

Lakeview Museum officials led the campaign for the new museum, and its collections, trustees and staff formed the foundation of the Peoria Riverfront Museum operation when it opened in September 2012.^[4]

The Peoria Riverfront Museum was funded by private contributions with support from donated land by the city of Peoria and support for the building by a tax referendum approved by voters of Peoria County. The operations are supported by donations and earned revenue while the building and grounds are owned by Peoria County and leased to the museum by public-private partnership agreement. Key to the agreement was the enactment by local voters of a supplemental sales tax.^[5] An admission fee is charged.

The museum building is adjacent to the historic Rock Island Depot and Freight House.

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