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Containing more than 100,000 objects, the historical artifacts and archives of the Kansas City Museum collection offer a rich sampling of Kansas City’s local and regional history while representing the daily lives of past generations. The Museum and its collection are irreplaceable civic assets.

The objects in the Museum’s collection are cultural heritage materials representing the tangible and intangible. They are used for educational and research purposes, and for the enjoyment and enrichment of visitors. The Museum is in the “forever business,” aiming to collect, manage, store, care for, curate, display, and preserve objects, materials, and archives into perpetuity.

Encyclopedic in nature, the collection is organized into several core groups, and one of the groups is the GLAMA Collection—Gay and Lesbian Archive of Mid-America. Kansas City Museum Curator of Collections Lisa Shockley notes, “The GLAMA collection is a vital part of the Kansas City Museum’s mission to include all communities that make up our larger community of Kansas City. We are honored to continue growing this collection.”

Headquartered at UMKC’s Miller Nichols Library within the LaBudde Special Collections, the mission of GLAMA as stated on their website is to collect, preserve, and make accessible the materials that reflect the histories of the LGBT communities of the Kansas City region. The Kansas City Museum collaborates with GLAMA to collect those items their archive can’t: the 3-dimensional items like performance costumes, pageant memorabilia, theater props, t-shirts and uniforms. Currently, approximately 500 3-dimensional objects are held by the Kansas City Museum.