InsideEdition.com got a sneak peek at the American Kennel Club's Museum of the Dog.
We love them. They're woven into our lives and have been by our side since the beginning of mankind. They bring us comfort, companionship and laughter.
So why wouldn't there be a museum dedicated to our beloved dogs?
There is, and it has come full circle.
InsideEdition.com got a sneak peek at the American Kennel Club's Museum of the Dog.
“It's a modern, state-of-the-art facility. It's a great collection," Executive Director Alan Fausel told InsideEdition.com. “And our first exhibition is amalgam of the AKC Museum of the Dog collection and the AKC collection, both of them have their own collection and here we've picked the highlights for them.”
It's not quite a new museum, first opening in 1982 in New York City. Five years later, it temporarily relocated to St. Louis, Missouri.
Fausel says the decision was made to bring it back home after attendance in St. Louis started to dwindle.
The museum is now located just steps away from Grand Central Station. Ronald Menaker, AKC’s chairman of the board, says it is home to one of the largest dog art collections in the world.
In addition to the traditional paintings, books and sculptures, there are many interactive exhibits.
“One of the things about this is it's trying to illustrate why breeds are the way they are. Are they purpose bred? We have a what we call a meet the breeds table, which tells you about each breed and it's attributes and its history and its origin,” Fausel said.
Fausel is an art history professor, contributor to PBS’ "Antiques Roadshow" and a dog owner himself.
Even he has learned a lot from putting the museum together.
"It makes you look through this prism and after watching dog paintings and looking at dog paintings, I saw artists who observed them, and they made me see dogs differently, because they pick up on things that you might not have seen,” Fausel said. “Just the way they sit, the way they look at you, the way they curl up. A really good dog artist will catch those things."
There's also a section dedicated to pups in pop culture.
"Some of the less traditional things I wanna talk about is dogs in pop culture. And this spans different generations. We have Old Yeller which would be my generation, up to Beethoven and (the movie) 'Babe,' which is a younger generation as well. They always cycle through society,”
No real dogs will be featured at the museum. Yet.
“We're in a modern office building so out of respect to our neighbors, we want to keep the noise down. But service dogs are certainly allowed, and we will have dogs for demonstration, for educational opportunities that we have here,” Fausel stated.
The AKC Museum of the Dog officially opens to the public on Feb. 8.
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