By Joe Jarosz
Northeast News
April 29, 2015

KANSAS CITY, Missouri — Summer is just around the corner. Also around the corner, new exhibits at the Kansas City Museum.

Since late last year, the museum has been available to private tours only. But beginning this May, original furnishings belonging to the Long family and other historical artifacts are coming back into Corinthian Hall and the Carriage House of the Kansas City Museum in a new exhibition titled “Divining the Museum: Visions of Past, Present and Future.” Running from May 7 through June 13, 2015, the exhibit will be curated by Max Adrian and Paige Beltowski, and features Kansas City artists and students from the Kansas City Art Institute. Divining the Museum is a temporary exhibition.

Divining the Museum showcases contemporary artwork including installations, sculpture, ceramics, and photography alongside original objects from the Museum’s collection. Adrian and Beltowski propose imaginative and modern relationships with the historical artifacts and materials to catalyze conversation about the reinterpretation, relevancy, and meaning of history.

Kansas City Museum Executive Director Anna Marie Tutera said the exhibit delves into the how and why boundaries between fact and fiction are blurred when new audiences are learning about historic events. Divining the Museum poses this question and others in many forms to stimulate curiosity, dialogue, and dreams of the future Kansas City Museum.

Divining the Museum is the first exhibition of 2015, and it sets the tone for the year. Tutera said the subject for this exhibition came about last fall during discussions with Adrian. They both soon realized they had a similar vision on how to use contemporary art to respond to historical artifacts and events.

“We both really liked the concept of selecting artifacts from the [museum’s] collection and having them reinterpreted through a modern perspective,” Tutera said. “Max and Paige both have a common theme in their existing works around the boundaries and the blurring of fact and fiction. So what happens to the current knowledge you have about a historic event when you learn new knowledge about it? Or what happens when you get older and your perspective changes and how do you reinterpret historic events?”

It’s a timely show for the museum as it goes through its own transitional period. On May 1, 2014, the parks department assumed management responsibilities of the museum at Corinthian Hall. Since then, Tutera has been trying to understand how the artifacts will be displayed at the museum.

“It felt like it was time to bring artifacts and archival materials back into Corinthian Hall and the Cariage House,” Tutera said. “And visitors had been asking since last fall. I thought a lot about that and really settled on bringing artifacts back, specifically original furniture.”

However, the museum doesn’t have possession of many Robert Alexander Long artifacts and materials. Tutera wanted to remind museum patrons because of the auction held by Long’s daughters in 1934, their selection is limited. After the deaths of their parents, the two Long daughters, Sallie America Long Ellis and Loula Long Combs, removed their favorite items from Corinthian Hall and had a two-day auction in 1934 to sell the remaining contents. In 1939, the Long daughters donated Corinthian Hall and its buildings to the Kansas City Museum Association to use for their new museum, which opened in 1940 as the Kansas City Museum. The original Corinthian Hall furnishings that are part of the Museum’s collection today were donated to the Museum from Long family members and others. In addition, the Museum has more than 20 of the Long family carriages, as well as Loula’s tack, trophies, and ribbons.

“I think that’s a good starting point to understand how you move forward when you don’t have a lot of the original furnishings and the spaces have been so altered going from mansion to museum over the decades,” Tutera said.

Along with the temporary exhibit, the museum is also bringing back its summer concert series and an additional exhibition in July. Another show, titled Connecting Communities Across State Lines: Mexican American Fast Pitch Softball Leagues, is scheduled to begin July 11 and run through the end of the month, July 29. The temporary exhibition explores the rich history and legacy of Mexican American fast pitch softball leagues in Missouri and Kansas.

Ideally, Tutera would like to see the concerts in front of the Museum. Scheduled to perform are: Victor & Penny on Friday, May 8; Take Five on Thursday, May 21; and Whiskey for the Lady on Friday, June 12.

“The intention is that they’re off to the front, just off to the side so people can be on the front lawn where there’s more space,” Tutera said. “I think it would be a more vibrant environment.”

An exhibition-opening reception will be held on Saturday, May 2 from 5-9 p.m. at the Kansas City Museum located at 3218 Gladstone Blvd., and it will include performative readings starting at 7:30 p.m. that tell stories inspired by the layered history of the Museum and its myriad inhabitant over the years. An RSVP is required for this reception as spaces will be limited. Please email your RSVP to anna.tutera@kcmo.org. Guided exhibition tours are free and will be available on the hour from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, May 7-30, and Wednesday-Saturday, June 3-13. For more information about the Kansas City Museum and the exhibition, visit www.kansascitymuseum.org.