Conference Spotlights Kansas City Museum
At a time when museums around the country are struggling to attract audiences and remain relevant in their communities, Kansas City Museum has something special to contribute – despite the fact that it’s undergoing extensive restoration that has limited its ability to present traditional programs and exhibits.
The Association of Midwest Museums recognized this, and asked Kansas City Museum representatives to present its story at its annual conference to peers from other cities.
Several months later, museum officials took a whirlwind road trip to Minneapolis for the conference. Leitch was joined by Museum staff members Rebecca Schroeder, curator of education and Denise Morrison, director of collections. Katrina Henke, board president of Friends of Kansas City Museum and Gary Marsh, chair of the Mayor’s Kansas City Museum Advisory Board, also attended.
Thinking Outside The Box – When There Is No Box
Kansas City Museum officials shared the story of the Museum in transition with attendees at the Association of Midwest Museums recently.
Leitch titled the presentation aptly: “Thinking Outside The Box – When There Is No Box.”
He described the Museum’s innovative programs and projects – an original puppet show about our founding family, a street-level panel exhibit about our historic site, a fashion paper-doll publication about our historic costume collection, and the Community Curator program in partnership with local and regional historians and educators – that make the collection and the site accessible in this interim period.
Support From The Friends
The Kansas City Museum’s use of “storytelling” signage (both inside and outside the Museum) keeps visitors engaged and educated.
“Many of our Museum colleagues noted with surprise and appreciation that a member of our Friends would make the commitment to travel so far and make a presentation with us,” Leitch explains.
“We value so much this true devotion to the mission of Kansas City Museum from the Friends, and especially from Trina Henke. Her contributions to the presentation helped others - the Museum directors, architects and graduate students in the audience - gain a sense of our institution in human terms.
Friends Board President Trina Henke believes that the Friends can help the Museum continue to engage audiences, despite the restoration activities that limit traditional operations.
“Our role is to support the Museum in ways that it couldn’t accomplish otherwise. We can do it through education – by being interactive – and we’ll keep getting the word out in Kansas City,” she says.
Moving Collections
According to Museum Director of Collections Denise Morrison, the attendees at their session were interested in how Kansas City Museum handled everything from the logistics of moving collections out of the Museum to how the Museum manages public perceptions without a traditional Museum exhibiting collections.
“They were also interested in the programming aspect, and working with a city entity for the actual building matters,” Morrison says. “For that part, we were able to say that the work that’s being done now to the buildings is being taken care of by the city.”
Morrison recalls the challenge of taking out permanent exhibits, cataloguing items, finding a storage home for artifacts and arranging transport of valuable items over a short period of time in 2008 so the Museum could be readied for restoration.
“Some of those items had gone from donor’s hands straight into exhibits,” Morrison explains. “Moving them and finding temporary or permanent homes for them was a big issue.”
Please support the Museum through the Friends of Kansas City Museum. >>
