Our Collections | Berman Museum of World History

Berman Museum features four permanent exhibit halls and a changing exhibit gallery. Click the links below for a description of each hall.

World War I & II

American West
First Floor

Journey through the history of the exploration and colonization of the American west. See a replica of a farm wagon loaded with items used by homesteaders, a life-sized diorama of a western town saloon and maps of the western territories. See firearms and weapons from the Revolutionary war through Spanish American War, with particular emphasis on the American Civil War. Also view evocative Remington bronze sculptures.

Deadly Beauty
First Floor

This fascinating and unusual hall contains examples of rare and exotic weapons, spy and combination weapons, medieval suits of armor, unique British cavalry and presentation swords, French weapons from the Royalist Period and unique artifacts which personally belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte. A major item of interest is the Persian Scimitar of Abbas I, encrusted with 1295 diamonds, 50 carats of rubies, a 10 carat emerald in the hilt and 3 pounds of gold.

Arts of Asia
Second Floor

This beautiful hall features many examples of Chinese ceramics and furniture, household “gods,” and beautiful, intricately carved jade sculptures. There are also artifacts from India, Nepal, Southeast and Southwest Asia, Japan, and Korea. See items from the Qing Dynasty and Sung Dynasty of China.

World War I and II
Second Floor

This area rounds out the permanent halls with examples of weapons and uniforms from the World War I and II periods of our nation’s history. Among other interesting items in this hall, you will see Adolf Hitler’s personal silver tea service, parachute dummies, and a recreation of a WWI trench with a dugout. Also see a real West Gun, a unique trench weapon used in WWI. There are only two in existence today! This hall also includes an extensive collection of machine guns from the Spanish American War through WWII, as well as Axis and Ally mortars, mines and bazooka/rocket launchers.

Changing Exhibit Gallery

Second Floor

Our Changing Exhibits Gallery hosts a variety of temporary and traveling exhibitions wiith history or cultural themes during the year. Our current exhibition is Chinese Cloisonné & Objects of Luxury, on view now through Sunday, September 19, 2010.