Wear Your Politics, Drink Some Beer, Have Some Fun

Museums are obvious places for kids to come to, but what about adults,” muses Angie Albright. “What kinds of learning opportunities can museums provide for adults?”

The Clinton House Museum, of which Albright is director, has hit on a new offering for its grown-up guests. Starting Tuesday — in cooperation with the Fayetteville Ale Trail — the Clintons’ Fayetteville home will host six History Happy Hours, each intended to introduce a local brewery, showcase some of the museum’s collections that aren’t routinely on display and encourage visitors to just have fun.

There will be a theme each month, Albright says, and the first one is “Wear Your Politics.” By way of example, she says she will be wearing “a bunch of her dad’s Jimmy Carter buttons,” but she says even “Joe Smith for Student Government President” or “Save the Planet” suits her. “It’s meant to be fun.” What Albright envisions is an event which requires almost no pre-planning for participants. No advance tickets will be sold.

“You walk up to the door, pay a $5 cover, get a glass and — on the 19th — get two drink tickets for beer from Apple Blossom Brewing Co. in Fayetteville.

“We’re hoping whatever the theme is starts the conversation, and it will feel more like an open house,” she says, adding there will be snacks, non-alcoholic beverages and music, too, along with a fashion show from the museum’s collection. That, she says, is part of the point.

“We don’t have a large collection, but we have more than we have storage space for,” Albright says, “and it’s always being added to. I’ve discovered in the two and a half years I’ve been in this job, people saved so many Clinton things over the years. And even though we’re really focused on the ’70s, people from right here in Northwest Arkansas have all these connections to the White House and the Clintons, so they bring those things to us.

“I like to say that we are a place for everyone’s story. We tell stories, but I’m surprised how many people come to us and tell us their stories — and that just adds to our story.”

Photo courtesy Clinton House Museum Flannery Quinn, historian at the Clinton House Museum, models a “very patriotic” sequined vest worn at the 1996 Democratic National Convention. “Wear Your Politics” will be the theme of the first History Happy Hour Feb. 19 at the Fayetteville museum, a collaboration with the Fayetteville Ale Trail.