KC ORIGINALS

Everything to Everyone.

Every generation of Kansas Citian cherishes a slightly different memory of the Kansas City Museum, says Denise Morrison, director of collections and curatorial affairs. She’s been with the museum for 34 years – longer than any other employee.

For instance, Gen Xers may remember climbing through the museum’s igloo or on a covered wagon. Older generations sidled up to a stuffed buffalo.

But the igloo has been gone since 1985, and the buffalo went into storage during a decade-long collection deaccession that began in the mid-1990s. Even though exhibitions tend to both stick around the museum for years and stick in the heads of visitors for longer, the institution’s mission has evolved a lot.

Through each change, the museum has always wanted to be Kansas City’s museum – everything to everyone. But it wasn’t until recently that it’s truly begun to reflect the entire community.

At its opening in spring 1940, and for decades beyond that, the focus was on various veins of science, anthropology, and natural history.

Kansas City “didn’t have a children’s museum for a long, long time. So, an emphasis on that kind of early learning and play was part of what we did, because there was no one else doing it,” Morrison says.

In the 1960s, hunting and displaying big game fell out of favor as a practice that could fairly be categorized as “conservation” work, though science remained a focus until the early 2000s, around when much of that work was shifted under the umbrella of the newly formed Science City.

Being a natural history museum, a science museum, and an

historic mansion was just too much for the limited space and resources available.

Morrison says, “A lot of people don’t remember that the museum created Science City, just because it’s been at Union Station for so long and it’s now run by Union Station, Kansas City. I get that a lot.”

Since 1988 when Morrison began at the museum, she’s technically worked for the Kansas City Museum Association; Union Station, Kansas City; the city of Kansas City, Missouri; and now the Kansas City Museum Foundation.

She has a valuable institutional memory of the organization. “We always said we were everybody’s museum, but we really didn’t reflect everybody,” Morrison’s says.

Now, that really is the aim, through something called restorative practices.

“Restorative practices means that we’re working with the community and not for the community. So, working with them to tell their story, tell their narrative, collecting objects,” says Paul Gutiérrez, the museum’s director of visitor experience and public programming.

Nearly seven years ago, around the time the $22 million restoration began, the museum started working with residents from the surrounding neighborhoods, asking for feedback from the public, and hiring historians and educators to build new content. They wanted the culture and people to drive what happens with exhibitions and programming.

Gutiérrez says the third floor brings the past, present, and future together. A small theater now shows documentaries, and exhibitions are up in a neighborhood gallery that the museum and the University of Missouri-Kansas City Center for Neighborhoods partnered to create.

One idea in the neighborhood space is that people can come and record their stories, Gutiérrez says. It’s like leaving a deposit. They record messages about growing up in the area or choosing to move there. He describes the gallery as being made up of individuals who aren’t frequently highlighted.

“Because people know the Kauffmans and the Blochs and the Kempers and all of them,” he says. “But this guy really brings it closer to home where individuals like us are making a difference in Kansas City.”

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MEAN MULE POMEGRANATE GIN FIZZ

Makes 1 cocktail

2 oz Mean Mule Agave Gin 1 ½ oz POM 100% pomegranate juice ½ oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice ¾ oz simple syrup 1 egg white 1 oz soda water Garnish with rosemary sprig

Instructions: Combine gin, pomegranate juice, lemon juice, simple syrup, and an egg white in a cocktail shaker and shake like you mean it for 15 seconds (no ice). Then add ice and shake like you really, really mean it for 30 seconds until cold. Strain the drink into a glass and gently top with soda water as the egg white rises to the top. Then add the rosemary sprig garnish.

botanicals in about 100 combinations before they found a recipe.

What they landed on does include juniper – for legal purposes – but also white peppercorn, cardamom, lemon zest, coriander, and, mostly strikingly, persimmon.

“We had an enormous persimmon tree on our property,” Meg says about her childhood home near Hermann, Missouri.

She says they wanted to bring in elements from their farm and heritage and even experimented with cornhusks and other things that grew all around them.

“Persimmon just really came out with something that we loved and have good memories around. Grandma used to make persimmon jelly,” Meg says.

That’s part of getting at the “whole truth” of the city. Moving forward, the Evanses plan to add another agricultural

“It’s our civic duty to have a history museum to tell the truth element to their business: growing their own agave. They’ve purabout our history, not to blame or shame individuals. For ex- chased 40 acres in Arizona and will plant this coming December, ample, on the second floor, we talk about J. C. Nichols.” though, Jeff says, it’ll be nearly seven years before they’ll be able

Nichols was a major commercial and residential real es- to harvest and distill their crop. tate developer a century ago. Gutiérrez says that while some Meg says the goal is to be a single-estate manufacturer. “Evof his achievements are highlighted, so are his contributions ery part of the process of being single estate is important. So, to the city’s ongoing geographic segregation. single estate means from dirt to bottle, it is all on us.”

In addition to this type of exhibition are more traditional If it takes off, theirs will be the first large-scale agave farm in ones that people remember from long-ago visits. Morrison the United States, which sounds not only like great bragging rights for Mean Mule, but for Kansas City.

says a homemade turn-of-the-century motorcycle is on display that hasn’t been out since the 1980s, as well as a mirror ball from the historic El Torreon Ballroom.

“We’ve got a lot of collections,” Morrison says. But much of what’s archived doesn’t “reflect this diverse element. You have to find the universality of some things, then you have to reach out to these diverse communities and say, ‘We would love to have those items that are unique to your heritage, but also that reflect your Kansas City-ness or your Americanness that we all share.’”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anne Kniggendorf is a staff writer/editor at the Kansas City Public Library. She's the author Anne Kniggendorf is a staff writer/editor at the Kansas City Public Library. She's the author of Secret Kansas City and Kansas City Scavenger, and a freelance writer for various local of Secret Kansas City and Kansas City Scavenger, and is a freelance writer for various local and national publications. Visit her website: annekniggendorf.com. and national publications. Visit her website: annekniggendorf.com.