News Archive

This is the last week to see the special exhibit at Kauffman Museum (through Sunday, Jan. 17).

The museum has partnered with Humanities Kansas to bring the Smithsonian Institution's traveling exhibit to the local area.

Kauffman Museum has built on the photographs, hands-on activities and audio and video clips provided by the Smithsonian in the “Crossroads: Change in Rural America” to tell the history and culture of local rural life and to spark conversations using its own companion exhibit, “Of Land and People: Our Community at the Crossroads of Change.”

The Kauffman Museum traveling exhibit “Sorting Out Race” will be on display just through the end of this month.

COVID-19 brought home from the road “Sorting Out Race: Examining Racial Identity and Stereotypes in Thrift Store Donations,” developed by a team of museum staff and community consultants in 2015.

Its last day is Sunday, Nov. 29.

Bethel will celebrate the 50th Fall Festival Oct. 3 and, as with many events this year, it will look a little different.

The most visible change will be no booths, vendors or entertainment on the Green.

Instead, planners are organizing several smaller in-person and virtual events, "still committed to being a community of Threshers," said Brad Schmidt, director of alumni engagement.

On campus, there will be the Fall Fest football game vs. Southwestern College at 6 p.m. in Thresher Stadium.

The Kauffman Museum board of directors has appointed longtime employee Andi Schmidt Andres as museum director. 

She had been serving as acting director since Jan. 28, following the resignation of Michael Reinschmidt.

Andres began working at the museum in 1993. She has held the positions of assistant to the director, education coordinator, curator of education, transitional operations manager and, most recently, acting director.

The American Association for State and Local History has honored “Voices of Conscience“ with an Award of Excellence.

Bethel College's Kauffman Museum was the only entity in Kansas to win a 2020 AASLH award.

The AASLH Leadership in History Awards, now in its 75th year, is the most prestigious recognition for achievement in the preservation and interpretation of state and local history.

Kauffman Museum is closed to the public but still offering education to that same public on the topic at the front of everyone’s minds.

“Science Behind the News: Viruses” is a new pop-up exhibit at Kauffman Museum that is mounted outside the front entrance (the building is at the corner of Main and 27th Streets in North Newton, across from the Bethel campus).

Developed by the New York Hall of Science, the exhibit offers informative and understandable education about the novel coronavirus identified in late 2019, and most commonly known as COVID-19.

As seniors across the country scramble to complete final projects under extraordinary circumstances, Emma Girton and Elizabeth Friesen Birky face one of the bigger challenges.

[Note: To see the complete Q&A with the student curators, scroll down.]

As college seniors across the country scramble to complete final projects under extraordinary circumstances, two from Bethel College face one of the bigger challenges.

What do you do when your project, by definition, is meant for people to visit and look at – and everything is closed?

On display at Kauffman Museum through March 15 is a Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibit honoring Martin Luther King Jr.’s final and most ambitious vision.

“City of Hope: Resurrection City and the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign” is currently at the museum on the Bethel College campus through March 15.

Kauffman Museum is open 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 1:30-4:30 p.m. Sat.-Sun., and closed Mondays and major holidays. There is an admission charge for non-museum members.

Kauffman Museum hosts its annual "Celebrate Kansas Day!" on Saturday, Jan. 25, in and around the museum.

This year's Kansas Day celebration will explore Kansas symbols, from sunflowers to box turtles, bison to meadowlarks, honeybees to Kansa Indians.

The museum and grounds open at 1 p.m. for an afternoon of special programs and activities. Admission to the museum and all activities are free on Kansas Day.

Seniors Elizabeth Friesen Birky and Emma Girton accepted the award on behalf of the museum Nov. 8 at the Kansas Museums Association annual conference.

The KMA has selected Kauffman Museum’s special exhibition “Campaign for a New China: Looking Back on Posters from the Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976” for the 2019 Award of Excellence, presented at the annual conference, held this year in Lindsborg.  

The students served on the exhibit team for a museum-college collaboration course led by Rachel Epp Buller, Bethel associate professor of visual arts and design.