Repaired wing set for summer opening at St. Joseph Museums
By Riley Funk
The St. Joseph Museums is rolling toward completing a renovation project after water damage impacted exhibits there almost a year ago.
Flooding at the museum at 3406 Fredrick Avenue caused a whole wing to be shut down last May for repairs. Sara Wilson, executive director of St. Joseph Museums, said the burst pipe caused a major loss.
“I would estimate that to be probably close to $50,000 or $60,000 if you consider all of the staff time that it’s taking to replace,” Wilson said. “It’s been pretty intense.”
Strides have been made in getting funding to fix the site. The museum received a $10,000 grant from the Missouri Humanities Council and $3,000 from the Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area to help fix the damage, Wilson said.
Wilson credits the quick action of removing preserved pieces in the wake of the flooding with saving many artifacts.
“We didn’t have a whole lot of damage to the collections. Some things got wet, but they weren’t completely lost or destroyed. We’ve been able to do some conservation efforts on them,” she said.
The majority of the damage was to the exhibits themselves.
“The major bulk of what we lost was the exhibits,” Wilson said. “Interestingly enough with museum exhibits, the intellectual time that it takes to create the exhibits is pretty intense. So I knew as soon as that pipe burst that we were suffering a major, major loss.”
Now, the exhibit is on the fast track to re-opening, with a bit of a twist.
The restored area will be a melting pot of history and activities. The wing will include exhibits from different fields including archeology, Native American life, geology and paleontology.
“We’re designing these exhibits based upon some educational programs that we’ve been having a lot of people ask for,” Wilson said. “We’re putting some of those things in so that we can educate for families so it’s all-ages learning.”
Several exhibits are still being put together, but the goal is to have everything ready for a summer opening.
“We’re very, very excited to be able to open this,” Wilson said. “We’re shooting to have the whole wing open in August, but at least part of it probably will be open in the next month and a half.”
Wilson said residents who want to volunteer time can play a part in the process of completing the renovation. For more information visit www.stjosephmuseum.org/volunteer or call 816-232-8471.
