The Museum of Kansas City — Attraction in Kansas City

The story of the “New” Kansas City Museum begins as you might imagine, with the Old - the neighborhood, the building itself, and the history of its occupants is intriguing enough not to mention the fascinating artifacts and delicately-curated stories now housed with its walls (and even more inventory carefully sequestered in caves waiting to be cycled in). After falling into disrepair and lying fallow for two decades, a massive fundraising and philanthropic effort starting in 2014 would eventually culminate in the museum you see today.

A friend and I are old college buddies with one of the museum Board members (Shomari Benton) who encouraged us to stop by the first day the new museum was open to the public, shortly after the ribbon-cutting earlier that day. We met the dynamic Executive Director Anna Marie Tutera (who we heard grew up in a home across the street from the old museum property), and were greeted hospitably by Paul Gutiérrez, Director of Visitor Experience & Public Programming.

As we moved floor to floor, room to room throughout the space, several high points come to mind: Quality: the presentation, design, and execution of all the exhibits feels top-shelf, echoing the same experience you receive at other A-list museums around the world, but in a manner appropriate and comfortable in the space itself, the historic home of Kansas City’s famous Lumber Baron, Robert Long. Breadth: exhibits are both allocated by era as well as in one case geography, where a different Kansas City borough will be updated regularly. Relevance: both the documented history of bygone times via photo and object as well as the faces and stories of current living community influencers are represented in the museum, making it not just a place to learn from the past but celebrate and empower those making tangible impacts on the history of today, and tomorrow.

Overall, we were lucky to be some of the first of many guests at this wonderfully-restored Kansas City landmark, and I was personally impressed by the hard work and dedication of the Board and Staff that made it happen.

Congratulations to the staff, and to those considering a visit - the question is not about visiting or not, but moreso about when and how regularly. You...

I had never been till today and I would be better off not having gone. Worst museum in the United States. They’ve done too many modernized renovations that there isn’t much left of the original interior. If you’re going to go just walk around the exterior, everything else is a disappointment. Very disappointing and poor taste. The entire museum was disappointing and poor taste. I can’t imagine how incompetent its administration is. What kind of museum is it? History, house, weird art? They’ve done too many modern renovations to the house that you aren’t going to get a tour of the home. You’ll just see how some tasteless hacks pretend to play museum. Very little about Kansas City history that you couldn’t learn from a click bait article. Few artifacts (many aren’t labeled so you don’t even know at what you are looking). And for a museum of more photos than artifacts, not very many photos. Is it a history museum? It’s a house? Is it an art museum? There was one room that seemed to try to be a medical history room, but then there was some weird art mannequin in the corner they had nothing to do with the rest of the exhibits. There were several weird mannequins. The curators have no taste. None of the art was impressive or seemed to hint at a “collection.” It seems they just looked for the most tasteless crap to fill their halls. Hopefully it was a cheap as their esthetic. I wasn’t impressed with anything. The only good thing is that it is free. This has to be the worst museum I have ever visited. Hopefully it will fold and find...

The space is beautiful and charming! Lovely details everywhere. One day I went there with my Job (I work with adults with disabilities) and my client with autism opened and touched a piano key on one of the old pianos. A security guard came into the room and I immediately apologized and I was met with a scowl. I rushed along onto the next room and upstairs. My client and I were by the jukebox when the same security guard walked by and said “Make sure he doesn’t touch anything else” . Absolutely astounded by their actions, I felt unwelcome and decided to take my 2 clients and leave. When waking to the elevator I noticed that she was talking to one of the museum workers, warning her about us. As I walked past she said “she was just doing her job”. When I got downstairs she was talking to a person at the front desk (probably about us). On the drive back to my our Day Service I decided to call and complain about this behavior and how I felt unwelcome. Someone answered the phone and I told him what happened. I believe he said “yeah mhmm, I’m sorry that you had that experience I will let the people higher up know” and then promptly hung up. I’ve been there multiple times with different agencies in the past and this was the first bad experience I’ve had. Other than that all staff is wonderful and Paula in the gift shop is very helpful and...