Weekend event opens museums to community at no cost

Sep. 13—Free Museum Day 2023 is set for Saturday, presenting a special chance for those wanting to get in touch with local history and its many influences from around the world.

Each of the following museums will open their doors at 10 a.m. Saturday, with various closing times: Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, Andrew County Museum, Pony Express National Museum, Remington Nature Center, Robidoux Row, The St. Joseph Museum, Black Archives Museum, Doll Museum, the Glore Psychiatric Museum and the Wyeth-Tootle Mansion. All participating museums in this event, organized by the Museums Association of St. Joseph, are offering entirely cost-free admission to all attendees.

Organizers hope that the event will serve as a reminder to the community about the value of preserving Midland Empire history.

"All the cultural things that we do that preserve our heritage are our memory," said Harrison Hartley, a board member of the St. Joseph Historical Society. "And when we lose them, when we lose old buildings, when we lose elements of landscape that identify who we are and where we've come from, we're losing parts of ourselves."

Hartley is one of the people who has enhanced this weekend's events by introducing a new exhibit. His personal collection of African artifacts includes traditional clothing, masks, shoes and musical instruments. These works, Hartley said, help dispel the common myth that Africa lacked cultural and technological development prior to European colonization. Because of the Atlantic slave trade, many people in the local area can trace their roots to these societies.

Hartley's collection will be at the Robidoux Row Museum, which is the oldest currently inhabited structure in the city. New executive director Jeff McMillian said that at the time of St. Joseph's founding in 1843, the community served as a frontier era melting pot. Joseph Robidoux and many like him were archetypical French-Canadian fur traders, but Scots had an understated cultural impact. McMillian spoke while wearing a kilt and Jacobite shirt, which is closed with crisscrossed lacing.

"We tend to think of the Wild West in a very two-dimensional way — Jesse James, the Pony Express — and those are all perfectly legitimate pieces of things from that time," McMillian said.

"But, there remain little pieces of all of the peoples that made up that move west, the hopes and dreams of starting a new life, or looking for gold, or whatever their drive was. It was not one culture, one race or one society. It was a multitude of peoples from all over the world, passing right through St. Joseph, Missouri."

Marcus Clem can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @NPNowClem