Boone County History & Culture Center
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The Columbia Convention & Visitors Bureau logo consists of three elements: the primary COMO icon, the COLUMBIA, MO logotype, and the tagline. Each
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On the main floor, exhibits in the East Gallery rotate out every six to eight months; in the West Gallery they remain up to a year, March through February. Within these galleries, exhibits feature items and images from the center’s expansive collections in the vaults downstairs. Vaults are not open to the public, but they house a 500,000 glass-plate negative collection (1880s-1970) that is regularly mined for images and an extensive artifact collection that includes everyday items like vintage typewriters, farm implements, antique radios and rotary phones along with unique items like General Odon Guitar’s Civil War greatcoat. At the other end of the building sits Montminy Art Gallery, a 2,800-square-foot professional commercial art gallery. The space features six major shows a year from local and national artists, as well as a six-concert season. On permanent display in the art gallery is the Chickering grand piano of John W. “Blind” Boone, an African American composer and musician of renown, born in 1864. Throughout the park, historic buildings dot the landscape, four of which form the Village at Boone Junction, which are used for
Boone County History & Culture Center
At Historic Frank G. Nifong Memorial Park, 2900 E. Nifong Blvd., history, architecture, art and theater combine to create a home for both arts and culture in the Columbia community. Originally part of a farmstead belonging to Slater and Margaret Lenoir, the 60-acre park is the site of the Boone County History & Culture Center and the Maplewood Barn Community Theatre. Inside the History & Culture Center’s 20,000 square feet, there are two exhibit spaces, a professional art gallery and a host of archived collections that hold the history of Columbia and Boone County. “If you go around the country, counties the size of Boone County and smaller almost never have 20,000 square feet to work with,” says ChrisLogo Campbell, executive director of the Boone County History & Culture Center. “So the people that built this space between 1985 and 1990 were very farsighted and understood that space would be extremely helpful in the decades to come. And, I wish I had more.” Indeed, the center is bursting at the seams with collections and artifacts, Campbell says, and a committee is already looking at ways to increase space.
Boone County History & Culture Center
Moments to Remember Discover a place where history meets here and now.
