(Host) The National Museum of the Morgan Horse will be staying in Vermont, at least for time being. The non-profit American Morgan Horse Institute, which owns the museum, has postponed a decision on moving it from Shelburne to the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Kentucky.
The museum is dedicated to the breed developed by Randolph resident Justin Morgan in the late seventeen hundreds.
Gladys Severance of Colchester is chairwoman of the Museum Council. Severance says the key factor in the institute’s decision was opposition to the move from members of the Morgan Horse Association, most of whom live outside of Vermont.
(Severance) “I think the American Morgan Horse Institute underestimated the response, the emotional response of the membership at large. Because I think that people recognize that the history of the Morgan breed really belongs in Vermont.”
(Host) Severance says the institute also discovered that selling the building that houses the museum would be more complicated than initially thought.
She says while association members want to keep the museum in Vermont, they also want the Morgan Horse to be represented at the Kentucky Horse Park.
(Severance) “I think the institute is realizing that they have to spend a little more time on this and have a much more open discussion. I think that as a result, we’ll come out with a better decision – and it may include both Kentucky and Vermont, which I think would be the ideal situation. It would be an expansion rather than just a move.”
(Host) Severance says ideally, the archives and historical records of the Morgan Horse would stay in the Vermont museum and a new exhibit dedicated to the horse would be built at the Kentucky Horse Park.