Book Smart

Tony Rajer quite literally grew up in Wisconsin’s museums.

“My parents loved driving around the state and seeing the sites. My mother loved history and she often would say to my dad around the supper table, ‘We should visit that place. It will help Tony in school — he can get extra credit.’ And so Wisconsin’s historic sites became part of my family history,” he says.

Today, Rajer is a conservator and historic preservation specialist, trained at UW–Madison and Harvard University. This new guidebook, out in March, has taken him a lifetime to put together, often with the help of students in his UW–Madison art conservation classes. The book features photos and descriptions of the more than 400 institutions in the state. He describes the book as a celebration of collections honoring the natural and human-made worlds.

“It’s been a wonderful education to visit the museums, zoos and botanical gardens in this state. I still remember fondly our family trips from Sheboygan to the old Milwaukee Public Museum. I loved the Egyptian mummy exhibits, which I replicated at home in Playdoh. We also went to the Milwaukee County Zoo. I liked the elephants best — they inspired me to try my hand at papier-mâché with the Sunday newspaper,” Rajer says.

Another family favorite was Old Wade House in the village of Greenbush.

“It was Wisconsin’s second state historic site [the first was Villa Louis]. Old Wade House was given to the State Historical Society in 1953. The dedication ceremony was quite an event, and my parents were in the crowd,” he says. “The Kohler family of Sheboygan and their foundation had saved and restored the building, an old stage coach inn dating from the 1850s. The elder Ruth DeYoung Kohler had done much of the work, raising funds and persuading others to take an interest in the old abandoned hotel. She spent three years working on it, but died right before it opened. So the dedication was both a day of sorrow and celebration — poet Carl Sandburg was an invited guest. Because of Mrs. Kohler’s love of Wisconsin history we have Old Wade House as a historic site. She believed, as I do, that there is a future for the past.”

Rajer began his career as a technician at the Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan. He also was a conservator at the state Capitol between 1988-1993. Today, he still does conservation work, mostly for museums and historical societies. Although he has worked all over the world, the historical and botanical institutions he has found in Wisconsin never fail to impress him.

“What I love so much about Wisconsin’s museums, zoos and botanical gardens is the endless variety we have, from world-class facilities to tiny historical societies chock full of history,” he says. “I hope this book will help people enjoy Wisconsin’s varied heritages in all their forms.

“For me, history is alive in every corner of the state!”