The Vermont History Center and Leahy Library in Barre recently gained a treasure hunt-like space. With $250,000 in federal funds obtained by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and another $450,000 from the state legislature, executive director Steve Perkins and his staff finally realized a 25-year-old plan to create an "open-storage" room. The display method is an unfussy way to make more of the institution's collections visible to the public. For the new Research and Exhibition Gallery, Perkins, along with director of collections and access Amanda Gustin and collections manager Katie Grant, rescued 1,500 items from storage and artfully arranged them in glass-fronted shelving units, banks of glass-sealed drawers and a row of double-sided display racks hung from rollers. Because the objects are generally protected, visitors can pull out drawers at will and browse unsupervised. (Perkins recommends checking in at his nearby office first.) Open-storage spaces like those at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, which built its rows of glass cases in the late 1980s, tend to display dense groupings of similar items — such as dozens of teapots, each efficiently tagged with an acquisition number. The history center's display is more playful and interesting: The objects were chosen to reflect the state's celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the U.S., which will officially occur on July 4, 2026. (The show will stay in place for three years, Perkins said, through the 250th anniversary of Vermont as a republic.) Each display case has a QR code that brings up catalog details about the items in it. Visitors can access the codes using their phones or a portable scanner linked to two computers in the room. "I'm glad we're doing this now because we can improve on the [open storage] of 25 years ago with a thematic installation and digital access," Perkins said during Seven Days' tour of the space. Grant noted that the digital access makes research appealing, even for kids. "The other day, we had kids running back and forth" between the computers and the displays, "which you don't usually want in a museum," she said with a laugh. The semiquincentennial show is drawn from the 30,000-artifact collection of the Vermont Historical Society, which operates the center as well as the Vermont History Museum in Montpelier. One shelving tower contains an original Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia pint container alongside a plastic…