Happy New Year! As we begin 2024 there is a lot in transition in the museum’s galleries. Installation work for our two upcoming exhibitions will mean that all of the first-floor galleries will be closed for a few weeks. It may seem a little quiet, but there is a LOT going on behind the scenes.

This is a good time to take a deeper dive into the Charlotte Street Fellows 2023 exhibition, which is open through April 14!

A review of the exhibition here has some additional information that you may find helpful: Review: Charlotte Street Visual Artist Award Exhibition – Sixty Inches From Center

Also, we were able to interview Stuart Hinds, Curator of Special Collections and Archives at the University Libraries at UMKC about Ruben Castillo’s research of the Gay and Lesbian Archive of Mid-America. A transcript of that conversation is here: Interview with Stuart Hinds UMKC Libraries Special Collections GLAMA (PDF)

And if you would like to know more about Drew Shafer, there is a great article on KCUR about the importance of his activism (and it has more info from Stuart): Meet Drew Shafer, a Kansas City man behind the Midwest’s gay rights movement | KCUR – Kansas City news and NPR