Colonial Williamsburg will loan several objects from its extensive museum collections to the Missouri Historical Society in St Louis for display in “The National Lewis & Clark Bicentennial Exhibition.” This monumental three-year exhibition will focus on the Nineteenth Century transcontinental journey of American discovers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.

Objects on loan from Colonial Williamsburg are representative of rdf_Descriptions Lewis and Clark took with them on their expedition. The explorers used numerous tools such as chisels, a whetstone and a drawknife on their journey as well as a violin for entertainment. A corn grinder, kettle, a vice and a pair of needlework scissors were used for trade.

This traveling exhibition can be seen at five venues: the Missouri Historical Society, St Louis, January 1 to September 6, 2004; Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, November 6, 2004 to March 5, 2005; Denver Museum of Nature and Science, May 6 to September 22, 2005; Oregon Historical Society, Portland, November 11, 2005 to March 11, 2006; and the National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C., May 12 to September 11, 2006.

The Library of Congress is assembling objects for its own exhibition on Lewis and Clark, entitled “Rivers, Edens, Empires: Lewis and Clark and the Revealing of America,” July 24 to November 29, in Washington, D.C. Colonial Williamsburg is loaning the corn grinder for this display prior to sending it to Missouri.

Additional objects have been requested for display in museums across the country. Colonial Williamsburg will lend four guns to “Three Centuries of Tradition: The Renaissance of Custom Sporting Arms in America,” a traveling exhibition jointly curated by Colonial Williamsburg master gunsmith Wallace Gusler and Mark Silver, an independent gunsmith from Michigan.

Loaned objects from Colonial Williamsburg will include a high-quality German Jaeger rifle by Wagner, circa 1723; a Virginia rifle by John Shetz, circa 1800-10, which is Colonial Williamsburg’s finest example of an American-made gun; and two fowling weapons – a silver-mounted one hallmarked 1759 by Barbour of Newark and another by William Hutchenson, circa 1730 – that were owned by the family of Lord Dunmore, the last Royal Governor of Virginia.

The exhibition will be at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts July 12 through October 5, after which it will travel to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston from January 25 to April 26, 2004, and to the Connor Prairie Museum, Fishers, Inc, from June 4 to August 29, 2004.

Colonial Williamsburg also will loan an 1829 painted chest to the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville for the exhibition, “The Art of Tennessee.” The chest will be on display September 13 to January 18 at the Tennessee State Museum. The piece is of particular interest because it was found in Greene County, Tenn.

For information, 800-HISTORY or www.Colonial Williamsburg.org.