The Froiland Plains Indian Room

To step into the Plains Indian Room is to travel back in time a century or more. The items on display reflect the traditional lifestyle of the Sioux Indian People on the Northern Plains. The Cropp Case contains beaded, quilled, and painted articles of traditional Sioux Indian life. There is also a winter count, various tools and weapons, and a buffalo robe on display.

The Fantle Scandinavian Room

The Fantle Scandinavian Room is a replica of a real Norwegian living room in a 19th-century Norwegian house belonging to the Klett family. The original two-story structure was located in Opdal, southern Norway, and represents well the self-sufficient lifestyle led by most of the three million Norwegians and Swedes who came to America between 1800 and the early 1900s. The room contains hand-made furniture from Norway and Sweden collected by Benjamin and Sally Fantle in the 1930s. There are also various objects including rosemaled trunks, a spinning wheel, and utensils. The Fantle Collection of Scandinavian furnishings conveys a clear sense of the home environment that the emigrants left when they journeyed to the frontier.

The Jim Savage Art Studio

The Jim Savage Art Studio represents the democratic spirit of the frontiersman carver, who often found the comic side of life on the Great Plains. Jim was a whittler, like the wood carvers of Scandinavia, and he had much in common with the Sioux Indian craftsman whose way of life he admired. Jim's workshop, which was once in the backyard of his home in Sioux Falls, has been reassembled at the Center. Jim's work includes framed busts of Indians and horses and comical cowboy figures.

The Augustana Academy Research Room

Even our archival research area features an exhibit! Visit this room on the second floor where nine interpretive panels tell the history of Augustana Academy. The Academy functioned from 1860-1971 and moved west with the college until being permanently established in Canton, SD. Famous graduates include Ole. E. Rölvaag, South Dakota Governors Archie M. Gubbrud and Sigurd Anderson, and Mary (Harum) Hart. Additional Academy memorabilia is placed on display each summer during the Academy's reunion weekend.

There are several rotating exhibits at the Center in addition to those listed above.