Kansas Museum of History prepares to reopen after renovation
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Why is the Kansas Museum of History reopening after a three‑year renovation?
The Kansas Museum of History has been closed for three years while getting a dramatic makeover, but it's about to reopen with a day of fun and activities planned for November 22nd. I'm Kansas Reflector Editor Sherman Smith, and I'm here at the Historical Society grounds in Topeka to talk with Museum Director Sarah Bell about the reimagined gallery space at the museum. Sarah, welcome to the podcast.
Thanks so much for having me.
So how many calls have you gotten from teachers who are really eager to bring their students back to this special place?
You know, we've lost count. We have certainly gotten many calls. Teachers and visitors just generally are very eager to come back and we are so excited to be so close to welcoming everyone back into our space.
Good. Well we'll get into uh what that new space looks like uh a little later in the the episode here, but this is a renovation that's really a decade in the making, give or take. How did all this get started?
So I started in my role uh just over three years ago, actually a few weeks after we closed the museum for its renovation in early September. I started a few weeks after that. But yes, the renovation itself preceded me by uh many years before that. And it had been uh, I think probably thought about even longer than that. But it was about 10 years ago when our previous executive director, Jenny Chin, I think first really had the idea to do this renovation, this this full-scale, uh complete renovation of the museum. We had done updates along the way since we opened. open in the eighties but this was something that was going to be really getting the museum updated to welcome the twenty first century visitor and uh to be re envisioned in a way that would really be a wow experience.
And So Jenny, uh sadly and unexpectedly died in April of twenty twenty two. So up until then she had really been championing and leading the renovation. And along the way she hired Dimensional Innovations to D I to be the designers, egg uh fabricators and installers of our exhibits. And she selected DI because they're really known for their creative out-of-the-box thinking. They're actually a Kansas company, but they have done work across the country. And they've actually have done some work in some museums in our region, but I know this was also, I think for DI a really great opportunity for them to get to do a museum of this size and scale. And so the first few years were really spent on the capital campaign raising the six million dollars to pay for the exhibits.
And this was all privately fundraised. And after that, the um planning was was going in. I know there was a lot of research that was done to really get a sense of the stories that were going to be included in the gallery. And the decision was made, um, I believe by Jenny and her team. that it was going to be a thematic structure instead of the chronological structure that had been in place for um those forty years or so that had been opened. And so that takes a lot of careful thought and planning to tell history that way. Um, as a historian, that was certainly one of the challenges when I came in to really ensure that we are telling these histories and the stories in a way that makes sense for the visitor.
Um, when you strip away that one kind of core foundation of how you tell history.
Yeah. Well, tell us about your background. How how do you end up as a director of a state historical museum?
Ugh, it's I still pinch myself some days, honestly. It's a dream come true. I I am not a native Kansan. Uh I am from the Midwest. I moved around a lot as uh when I was a kid and finally landed in Missouri for high school and college and um Funny enough, I I never really thought of myself as going to be uh living in Kansas or to become a Kansan. But when I was looking for graduate schools and I knew that I wanted to pursue a masters in museum studies, KU was the best fit. So I arrived here, thought I'd be here for a couple of years and move on to somewhere else. And uh but KU I I stayed on because I had a professor encourage me to consider getting my PhD in history.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why is the Kansas Museum of History reopening after a three‑year renovation?
0:00–4:29
2
How did the idea for a full‑scale renovation originate and who championed it?
4:29–9:15
3
Why did the museum switch from a chronological to a thematic gallery layout?
9:15–13:18
4
How were priority artifacts chosen and what role did Dimensional Innovations play?
13:18–16:37
5
What were the biggest challenges during the demolition and construction phases?
16:37–21:31
6
Which new exhibits (train, biplane, grain truck, etc.) are the museum most excited about?
21:31–26:03
7
What activities and performances are planned for the November 22 reopening day?
26:03–30:28
8
What are the admission costs for the reopening weekend and regular visitor pricing?
30:28–34:17
Speakers
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