GREEN BAY, Wis. (WFRV) – The NFL Draft may have ended days ago, but the Neville Public Museum’s work to preserve its memory is just getting started. Already, it has taken some screens from fencing into the museum to be put away for later with the NFL’s permission.
“That’s our job as a museum, is to collect things as they’re happening. So we’re always looking for opportunities to collect, community-wide,” museum executive director Beth Kowalski said. “50 years from now, we can talk about the significance of the draft in 2025 in Green Bay, Wisconsin.”
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In addition to the decorative screens, the museum is hoping to get construction materials from the site, either for draft use or other purposes.
“Obviously, as a museum, we build a lot of things in-house, so there might be some things the team might salvage that we’ll purchase or be donated to us for that purpose, so we can actually use those in construction of our exhibits coming down the line.”
Discover Green Bay helped lead the museum to request access to the site from the NFL. Museum executives are not sure if there will be an exhibit or what that would look like now, but they are considering one in the coming months or years.
“We’re thinking that there’s potential in our core gallery that we might be able to suspend it from the ceiling, so we’ll have that conversation as we go forward,” Kowalski said.
And the museum is also hoping to gather relics from the draft from everyday fans, with the goal of telling the stories of fans.
“When we’re looking for artifacts, we’re looking for those stories,” Kowalski said. “We’re always looking for those personal stories and personal memorabilia that would be part of the conversation. So again, we can interview the potential donor and have that item as part of our collection going forward.”
“When items are donated, it may not immediately go on display, but we have the right space and location to be able to take care of it forever, basically,” she said. “Once we take it in, it’s part of the collection.”
The museum hopes to get an account from each donor to share their experience during the draft.
“We’re constantly looking for those community stories where we can tie an event in, capture that information, get that oral history, and record it so that we’re sharing it going forward.”
Interested donors can go to this page to fill out an artifact donation form.
As many children are too young or have not even been born yet to experience the draft, Kowalski hopes to bring that to them in a small way through future exhibits.
“Our job is to bridge communities and connect generations,” she said. “That’s the one thing that we look at the range and try to make sure we’re capturing it so that way a family can come here and see all the different touchpoints.”
Generations from now, Kowalski hopes people still remember how the community was at the forefront of the 2025 NFL Draft.
“That community connection,” she said. “We’re the smallest town to host it, but I think we did really well, thanks to all the partners. We’re just happy we could record it in time.”
With a film freezer and refrigerator in house, along with scores of other equipment pieces, the museum is well prepared to handle any artifacts that come its way. It has more than one million photographs in its archives and more than four million feet of video film.
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Some of those prized pieces of media are on display now through Sunday, May 4, as the “Lens Legends” exhibit.
“We featured historic photography from over 100 years ago, from the start of the Green Bay Packers to the mid-1980s, that’s the scope of our collection, plus film from all of our TV stations that we’re the lucky benefactors of,” Kowalski said. “Packers are always part of our storyline and community impact.”
