I concur with and endorse The Natchez Democrat’s recommendation that Natchez should have a general museum to tell an overarching community story of all its peoples and provide a place for community treasures to be displayed.

Ideally, such a museum would pull together all the stories that are told out in our separate historic houses and existing museums, and then point visitors out to visit those for deeper experiences — much as the current wall-mounted exhibit panels do in the Natchez Visitor Center.

But there is a bit of a chicken-and-egg question at hand in regard to community unity and support for such a museum. There is no doubt that such a museum would help to build community unity and provide an important partner to our local schools as we move into our tricentennial and beyond, but a massive dose of that community unity would be needed up front for a group of visionary volunteers to come together in support of the planning and fundraising that would be necessary.

Who will step up to form such a group?

I clearly recall in 1995 listening to Mayor Butch Brown address a gathering of board members of the National Park Foundation at Melrose, and hearing him describe Natchez as “a town of volunteers.”

In the 20 years since, I have found corroboration of that description over and over again — from the balloon race to the Relay for Life, to the humane society and Friends of the Library, to service organizations and fraternal organizations, Stewpot and Habitat for Humanity and literally hundreds of churches — to the operation of our historic museum houses and the opening of private homes for Pilgrimage.

Is the capacity for volunteerism in Natchez stretched too thin at this point to take on such a big and important cause as a unifying city museum?

I actually think that finding a building would not be the hardest obstacle to overcome — there are an abundance of buildings that could be suitable for this use. But identifying a “surplus” city-owned building is not the silver bullet here — it might be only a potential starting point.

I don’t believe that expecting the city to construct and operate a new museum is the best solution. A better way would be finding or building a motivated group of private visionaries to steer the effort — or perhaps a public/private partnership like the Community Alliance’s excellent job at creating downtown walking trails?

There are certainly institutional partners in place who would likely be more than willing to advise on the “museum science” technical side of things — from the National Park Service to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History to the Historic Natchez Foundation. And from the stored collections of these institutions as well as a little generosity from within the community, some fascinating exhibits could easily be produced.

I hope that eventually this will happen; it could be the best legacy project of our tricentennial year.

 

Kathleen Bond

Natchez resident