“Steven and Julie,” etched on a wedding ring, whispers a tale found within a desk on a Brooklyn street. This ring is just one of the countless secondhand oddities that call The Huckleberry Explorers Club Museum & Gardens & General Store in Detroit home.
Welcome to a place where the mundane becomes monumental. The Huckleberry Explorers Club isn’t just a museum. It’s an experience crafted by Stefany Anne Golberg and Morgan Meis. They met in college and brought this unique vision to life.
The Huckleberry Explorers Club began long before its physical location. It grew from Stefany’s habit of collecting the uncollectible like experiences and photographs. Her fear of discarding anything fueled its creation.
Imagine a space somewhere between a meerkat habitat and a grotto. The Huckleberry Explorers Club is a cozy womb of custom displays. Cardboard niches hold Golberg’s ephemera each with little tags. These tags offer context dates or adjacent experiences. One tag reads “Dave’s Market Parking Lot Cleveland Ohio July 2 2015.”
The Huckleberry Explorers Club museum’s aesthetic draws inspiration from a cave outside a monastery in Bulgaria. People would tuck little objects into recesses there.
Consider a drip of wax presented off a cardboard column. Stefany explains that Rabbi Alana borrowed her car once. Upon its return there was wax from a Shabbat candle. That wax became a Huckleberry Club item.
Stefany Anne Golberg and Morgan Meis live anachronistically. They exist in the modern world without phones. Their lives and the Huckleberry Explorers Club are intertwined. They read write and work in the Huckleberry Club Garden. Volunteers built this community garden over city-granted lots. It includes a meditation garden and a wood-fired outdoor pizza oven.
The Huckleberry Explorers Club also houses a general store. Here you might find Kodachrome U.S. travel booklets or vintage clothing. An armchair-furnished sitting area offers free coffee tea and candy.
The Huckleberry Explorers Club opened on January 1 2020. After some COVID-related closures it is now open three days a week. Hours are seasonal but generally run Saturdays Sundays and Mondays. After-hours gatherings include a microcinema and a book club.
Stefany envisioned the Huckleberry Explorers Club as a poetic experience. Visitors often just want to talk to her and Morgan. The Huckleberry Explorers Club has become a structure with different activities and rooms. The garden is a focal point in summer. People appreciate this structure.
The entire Huckleberry Explorers Club is a freewill offering. It’s not promoted on social media. Neither Stefany nor Morgan has cell phones.
At the Huckleberry Explorers Club you’re not just observing. You are entering into it. Each visit evolves. There are new structures and new people. It is a testament to finding the extraordinary in the ordinary.