Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Local history revealed through museum expansions
Area museums work to connect people to the region’s past, telling its stories through exhibits, artifacts and programming. Several museums have expansions and new projects underway that will help tell those stories.
ROGERS HISTORICAL
MUSEUM
The new campus of the Rogers Historical Museum is scheduled to open by the end of 2018.
That timeline is a performance measure for one of the Walton Family Foundation grants the museum received to help design and renovate the former Hailey Ford building at 313 S. Second St., said John Burroughs, museum director. The building most recently housed the Rogers Morning News until the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette sold it to Rogers last year.
The old Masonic Lodge at Third and Poplar streets will be upgraded and used for collections. The Hawkins House will remain, and the current museum space will be used for educational programming.
The museum has received about $1.3 million through two Walton Family Foundation grants and will receive another $2 million through a National Endowment for Humanities grant. The estimated cost for both buildings is between $5.5 million and $6.5 million, Burroughs said.
The National Endowment for Humanities grant is a matching grant in which it will contribute $500,000 if the museum raises $1.5 million.
The museum still has to raise about $900,000 for its part and is planning to launch the public phase of its capital campaign in a few months, Burroughs said.
Up until the Hailey Ford building became available, the museum had plans to construct a new building at Third and Cherry streets. Officials estimated eight years ago that it would cost $7 million to $8 million. It would likely be closer to $12 million now, which would be difficult to raise, Burroughs said.
“By looking at this option, it suddenly became very affordable,” he said of the Hailey Ford and Masonic Lodge buildings. “This option just works so well, and it works with the master plan for redeveloping downtown.”
The new, renovated campus will provide the museum with 29,278 square feet of space, compared to the 13,119 square feet it has now.
The permanent exhibit space will more than triple in size from 2,000 square feet to 7,000 square feet, while temporary exhibit space will increase from 720 square feet to 1,400 square feet. Space for education and storage will increase substantially, too, according to information Burroughs provided.
This year will be spent working with De Leon & Primmer Architecture of Kentucky on the design for the renovations, Burroughs said. Work could also begin for upgrading the old Masonic Lodge this year. Museum officials can begin to move 50,000 items in collections into that building if work is completed this year, he said.
Then 2017 and 2018 will be used to complete the project.
SILOAM SPRINGS MUSEUM
The Siloam Springs Museum is also looking to move into a historic building.
Its board is raising money to renovate the former post office at 101 S. Broadway Street.
The museum is currently at 112 N. Maxwell St., one street east of Broadway.
City officials announced that the former post office building would eventually become home to the museum when the city bought the building in 2011.
Exterior renovations could start as early as May thanks to a $56,600 grant from the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, said Trisha Posey, Siloam Springs Museum chair. That money will be used to replace the roof.
The former post office was built in 1937 and is on the National Register of Historic Places and Arkansas Register of Historic Places. A conservation easement on the exterior of the building requires that work be approved by the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, said Don Warden, museum director.
“It’s not a barrier. We want to keep it authentic,” he said.
The remodel plans by Matthias J. Pearson Architect have been approved, Warden said.
Renovation for the exterior and interior is expected to cost about $1 million. The city has pledged $500,000 for the project, and the museum board is responsible for raising the rest.
The board is seeking additional grant money from the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program and has launched a capital campaign, Posey said.
“For the remainder of the work, we will work with the city to bid out the construction when we reach a suitable tipping point on our fundraising,” she said.
The renovated building will provide the museum with more space for rotating exhibits, programming and events, such as art nights, lectures and public education.
“We envision the museum becoming a center of cultural life in downtown Siloam Springs,” Posey said.
SHILOH MUSEUM OF OZARK HISTORY
Interior renovation work to the Shiloh Meeting Hall could start as early as April, said its director, Allyn Lord, in late February.
The meeting hall was known as Shiloh Church and Odd Fellow Lodge over the years. New Era Lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows donated the property to Springdale in 2005. The Shiloh Museum of Ozark History manages the building.
The meeting hall, built in 1871, sits at 118 W. Johnson Ave., north of the museum. It is one of seven historical buildings the museum oversees.
Exterior renovations to the roof, belfry, chimney, windows and walls took place between 2007 and 2009.
The Springdale City Council hired Clements & Associates Architecture out of North Little Rock in February to work on the project. Construction, once started, should take six months, Lord said.
It won’t open to the public until parking and lighting work is completed, she added.
Work will include bringing utilities up to date and transforming the first floor into a meeting space, said Carolyn Reno, facilities manager. The upstairs will eventually be an exhibit space that highlights the various groups who used the building over the years.
Three churches and a Masonic Lodge built the meeting hall. The Women’s Civic Club of Springdale used it in the late 1910s and into the 1920s. The Odd Fellows gained possession of it in the 1930s.
The meeting room will have a more modern feel, but the upstairs will retain a historic ambiance, Reno said.
The first floor should be open in 2017, Lord said. The earliest the second floor would open would be 2019.
The second floor exhibit space will be completed after the museum is finished with its renovation of its main exhibits, Lord said. That renovation has been in the works for the past two years.
Officials have finished with two of the six spaces. Officials hope to have them all finished by the museum’s 50th anniversary in September 2018, according to Lord.
Each exhibit will be in English and Spanish, include interactive elements and use more technology.
“Visitors in general expect more from museums than they did 20 years ago,” Lord said. “We’re trying to up our game.”
The fundraising goal is $1 million to complete the renovation of the meeting hall, which includes the interior work, landscaping, parking, lighting and furnishings, Lord said. The museum has $715,000 and needs about $285,000. The public part of the capital campaign will be launched in a few months.
LOWELL HISTORICAL
MUSEUM
The Lowell Historical Museum is looking to expand by constructing a new building in the future Kathleen Johnson Memorial Park.
The park will be developed with several amenities on 100 acres that Leonard Johnson, Kathleen’s husband, donated to the city. The proposed plans include the museum being built on the southeast corner of the property, which is on the city’s west side.
The museum currently operates out of a 1,400-squarefoot home at 304 Jackson Place. The new building is proposed to be 6,000 square feet, said Liz Estes, museum director.
“We have several things on this property that are part of the museum, not part of this building, that we need to incorporate into the (new) building,” she said.
The new building will provide much-needed storage and room to receive and house more artifacts that it currently doesn’t have room for, Estes said. The veterans’ library and display will be expanded.
The Butterfield Stagecoach, an icon of the town, will also be “the jewel” of the new museum as it will be moved from its location, which isn’t climate-controlled, she added.
The project is estimated to cost around $600,000. The museum has a donor who has offered a $2 match for every $1 raised, Estes said.
The museum is in the process of forming a nonprofit foundation to raise money and organize and implement the building plan. It will also operate the new museum once it’s opened, she said.
The foundation will have a five-member board, and Estes will become executive director.
The museum had 1,537 visitors last year.
The museum is expected to move by the end of 2017.
WALMART MUSEUM
While other museums are looking to expand their footprints, the Walmart Museum has expanded its audience with the creation of a new website.
It has been five years since the Walmart Museum at 105 N. Main St. in Bentonville was remodeled. It greeted more than 350,000 visitors last year. It averaged between 60,000 to 65,000 visitors each year prior to the remodel, according to Alan Dranow, senior director of the Walmart Heritage Group.
“It just seems to be increasing,” Dranow said. “With that we ask, ‘how can we (continue to) tell our story,’ and that’s the whole point of walmartmuseum.com.”
The interactive website has had 170,000 page views since it launched in May, according to Dranow. Visits have come from all 50 states, plus Washington D.C., 120 countries and 171,593 cities worldwide.
The website, designed by Shoptology, has already received awards, including three W3 Awards and two Dallas Addy Awards.
Several new online exhibits are underway and expected
to launch before WalMart’s annual Shareholders Week in June. They include an oral history section that encompasses 2- to 3-minute videos from interviews with former Wal-Mart officials, a blog called 105 N. Main that will feature items in collection that aren’t part of a larger exhibit, and an exhibit on Wal-Mart transportation.
An online museum store is also in the works, Dranow said. It will have “several hundred items” for sale when it opens.
There are also plans to translate the website into other languages, such as Spanish, French, Portuguese and Chinese.
Meanwhile, the brick and mortar museum will soon have on permanent display one of the doors from Sam Walton’s first store, The Ben Franklin Store in Newport. There are few artifacts that remain from that first store, Dranow said. Another door from the same store will go on display at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.
The Walmart Museum is also in the process of helping the Chisholm Trail Museum in Kingfisher, Okla., build an exhibit commemorating Sam Walton, Dranow said. Walton was born in Kingfisher.