The Panama Canal Museum in Seminole, FL, closed on July 31, 2012, and transferred its collection to the George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida, in Gainesville, ensuring its mission to preserve the history of the United States in Panama will live long into the future.



The University of Florida is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Panama Canal with a series of events and ongoing exhibitions across campus. More than a dozen exhibits related to the planning, construction, development and impact of the canal are on display across campus. For details, see https://cms.uflib.ufl.edu/PanamaCanalCentennial/Exhibits. Can’t make it to Gainesville? Check out the online exhibition at

http://exhibits.uflib.ufl.edu/canal100/index.html. The exhibits feature rare and unique objects from the collections of the George A. Smathers Libraries, including the Panama Canal Museum Collection. UF does not have a museum to house the collection, but the centennial celebration offers an opportunity to display objects in various exhibit venues on campus. This approach spreads awareness of the collection and exposes it to cross-disciplinary analysis and interpretation. The Panama Canal Museum Collection includes more than 16,500 objects --photographs, artwork, newspapers, books and ephemera -- that document the history of the United States in Panama. Many of these items have been digitized and can viewed online at https://ufdc.ufl.edu/pcm. The Panama Canal Museum was the only museum in the world founded solely to preserve the history of the American era of the Panama Canal (1904-1999). The museum collection recognizes the contributions of the whole world to this 20th century engineering marvel, considered by many to be the moon shot of its day. Focusing on the construction, operation, maintenance, and defense of the canal during its formative years, the collection shows how these efforts helped make Panama's unique geography and location truly a crossroads of the world. Learn more about the former museum





Join the Friends of the Panama Canal Collection online:

https://apps.uflib.ufl.edu/pcmmembership/





