Topeka ? James McClinton hadn’t been in office long when the Kansas Museum of History came calling.

They wanted his suit.

To be exact, they wanted the suit he wore when taking his oath of office as Topeka’s first black mayor.

“It was a bit humbling,” said McClinton, who left office this year, after serving for about a year. “I guess when you’re in the middle of it you don’t think of the history of it all.”

For Kansas Museum of History curators, history happens every day. The trick is to recognize important moments and seize the opportunity to collect objects that will help tell that story decades later.

Curators can already count on having some current objects – such as toys or wedding dresses – donated in future years, said Rebecca Martin, assistant museum director. Other items take quick thinking to grab before they’re gone, such as the spontaneous, homemade signs and crafts that people created as they grieved the 9-11 victims.

And, had they not made an early claim to the mayor’s suit and office chair, Martin said, those items probably wouldn’t have made it to the collection.

Modern collections

The museum has more than 100,000 items in its collection – carefully catalogued and stored in a way focused on preserving them for future generations. In one storage room on the museum grounds, farm equipment and antique cars share three stories of space with dinnerware, gas masks and just about anything one can imagine.

For the past four years, an extra effort has been put on collecting items from the 1950s through present day, focusing on various themes. Curators are developing a collections plan for that period, and they gather monthly to discuss major topics in the news and if they may deserve a place in the museum in future years.

For example, tourism is one theme, and ads for various campaigns, including the new “Kansas, As Big As You Think,” are being stored away. To help tell the story of illegal drug use, the museum staff has tucked away posters from a 2001 Kansas Department of Health and Environment campaign to warn retailers about how people use household ingredients to manufacture methamphetamine.

Museum staff predict energy will be a big story in the future and wonder about trying to collect a wind turbine. Knowing the role of the airline industry in Kansas, they plan to collect the clothes worn by an airline worker. And they want to tell the story of rural life, perhaps with the help of an “on your honor” pay cup that might be seen in a rural diner.

Near the china and crystal glasses lining museum storage shelves, a Rusty’s Last Chance Saloon cup from the Aggieville hangout of Kansas State University students might seem out of place. But it also tells a story.

“You can’t have an up-to-date collection of food service without having plastic cups,” Martin explained.

Spontaneous expression

Sept. 11, 2001, helped change the nation’s mindset and curators were able to begin collecting items from history as it unfolded. The spontaneous outpouring of grief after the terrorist attacks helped define those initial days and weeks. Thus, patriotic pins and a flag created with the handprints of students are now in storage.

Curators also have saved a simple plywood sign with the words “NOT TODAY FRED” painted in white. The sign came from a 19-year-old Topekan who was offended by the picketing of the Rev. Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church in the days after 9-11. It is a sign that responds not only to the terrorist attacks but also Phelps’ mark on the state’s history with his well-known anti-homosexual picketing.

“We love the idea of that totally spontaneous expression,” Martin said.

Murl Riedel watched recently as his camouflage fatigues from serving in Iraq were preserved. Riedel, an assistant curator, returned in March after 13 months of serving with his Kansas National Guard battalion based out of Hiawatha. During his deployment, he kept a journal and collected items that he thought would show a “soldier’s experience.”

So, he brought T-shirts and the purple K-State pennant he took with him – “That’s just because I want to have K-State stuff in the collection,” he said – to the museum.

“I want to leave something behind to represent what the experience was like,” he said. “How it will be interpreted I don’t know, and I don’t really care. I don’t want to sound negative, but that’s for people in the future to decide how they interpret things.”

Keeping it relevant

On a national level, museums face ongoing challenges to be relevant to communities; current collections can help that.

“You frequently hear the question, ‘So what?”‘ said Ed Able, president and CEO of the American Association of Museums in Washington, D.C. “‘Why should I care about this that happened 150 years ago? What relevance does that have for me today with the issues we are dealing with in our community – addiction, homelessness, AIDS, crime, racism? How does this institution help me deal with those issues in my community?’

“So I think that particularly history museums are attempting to be more aggressive,” he continued. “I think it’s trying to demonstrate why history matters today.”