Kingman Museum

On February 7, 2003, Kingman Museum, Inc. received the "determination letter" from the Internal Revenue Service verifying that KMI met the criteria to be an exempt organization; coincidentally, the doors to the "new" Kingman Museum were open to the public that same week. Today, Kingman Museum is open year round and has a staff of three full time pr... ofessionals (CEO, Collections Manager, and Special Projects Manager), plus part-time gift shop manager, educator, and custodial person. Kingman Museum continues to grow and in FY2009 served over 26,000 people through the offering of group programs to pre-K and K-12 groups, serving the at-risk children of Battle Creek who participate in the 21st Century Community Learning Center programs, providing the general public with planetarium shows (8 shows per week), presenting two rotating exhibitions annually, and free monthly lectures for an adult audience, in addition to special annual programs such as Spooky Science Saturday and February Free Day. It prides itself on it collaborations with other art and cultural organizations and businesses throughout the county. One of Kingman Museum's main goals is to become accredited by the American Association of Museums and to that end it has a number of projects underway. They include updating and documenting all policies and procedures, building IT capacity, creating and adopting plans to focus our growth and capacity building initiatives (strategic, marketing, fund development, etc.). Two years ago, it placed the care of its collection on high priority. A project to inventory and accession the entire collection is funded in part by a two-year grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), providing funding for two part-time positions: a collections intern and a data entry person. The significance of this project cannot be understated. First, the collection has never been completely inventoried or catalogued, so with this project we will establish both intellectual and physical control of the collection. Second, ...Read More