History Finds Its Story

Ben Terwilliger started at the Eudora Community Museum as the organization’s first paid employee, an intern completing his degree in museum studies at the University of Kansas. Now the museum’s executive director, Terwilliger has been with the organization for nearly a decade.

“Right now we are in the process of coming up with the stories for that core exhibit. We are thinking about the main stories we are trying to tell.”

For a museum, stories typically spring from display items. The Eudora Historical Museum’s items are a vast collection of artifacts—all donated—assembled over the years. Terwilliger and his team (community volunteers and advisers from the faculty and staff of the KU museum studies department) are trying to work out what the important stories are and which artifacts serve to tell them. Once the stories are in place, Terwilliger and his team will comb through the artifacts and tailor their collection to fit the stories.

All museums face choices on what items to keep, what items to absorb into their collections, what items to cull and what items to kindly decline. If these standards were not applied, then there would be no difference between a museum and a mystery storage bin.

1. The item must relate directly to the history of the Eudora area. Good examples of this would be the “crown jewels” of the exhibit, such as the only extant tintype photograph of Eudora Fish (for whom the town is named after) or the actual deed to the land granted to the community by Eudora’s father, Paschal Fish. 2. It must be something the museum does not already have. 3. Finally, it must be in acceptable shape. Sadly, for all of the 19th-century Dragoon buttons, Native American pottery shards and artifacts left from the Oregon trail, there are some things that may get left behind when the exhibit gets its revamp, such as one sad, little taxidermied armadillo that doesn’t quite fit the narrative. Is it an awesome armadillo? Absolutely! Does it encompass the history of the community? Sadly, no.