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Museum exhibit features WKCF Garden City Telegram A new short-term exhibit has opened in the Front Door Gallery at the Finney County Historical Museum in Garden City, telling the story of the Western Kansas Community Foundation on the organization’s 25th anniversary. The WKCF was founded on May 22 of 1996 and the exhibit marking the occasion will be in place until approximately May 31. It is entitled “Beyond Charity, Celebrating 25 years of local philanthropy by the Western Kansas Community Foundation.” The Front Door Gallery is a small space near the museum’s entrance, where displays change four to six times each year. ....
The exhibit marks Kansas 160th birthday. Steve Quakenbush, executive director of the Finney County Museum, said this is the first Front Door Gallery exhibit of the year. Typically, they try to have four to six a year. Titled “Ad Astra Per Aspera, Kansas Latin motto, the exhibit tells how the admission of Kansas to the Union on Jan. 29, 1861, was a spark that helped ignite the American Civil War, Quakenbush said. It s often overlooked. One of the major national issues in the late 1850s and into 1860, was whether Kansas would come into the Union as a slave state or a free, non-slave state, he said. It was actually President Lincoln s advocacy of Kansas entering the Union as a free state that enraged a lot of House members and senators from Southern, slave-holding states and prompted several of them to resign from Congress, go home and begin forming the confederacy. ....
Celebrating support, upcoming events and 160 years of Kansas history As we begin a new year this month, most Southwest Kansans probably want to look more toward the future than the past, with hopes of better times to come after recent and continuing adversity caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, not to mention current social and political strife. However, January also brings a chance to reflect on history for all of us in Kansas, since 2021 marks the 160th anniversary of the birth of our state. It was on Jan. 29, 1861 that the 34th star first took its place on the blue field of the American flag, converting us from a contested territory to an ambitious young state whose constitution forbade slavery – a controversial national issue at the time that touched off the Civil War. ....