Organization: Liberty Memorial Association dba
Mission: The National WWI Museum and Memorial (NWWIMM) is America's leading institution dedicated to remembering, interpreting, and understanding the Great War and its enduring impact on the global community. The Museum and Memorial fulfills this mission by: establishing the Museum and Memorial as the foremost interpreter and resource for insight into the Great War and its enduring impact; providing first-class visitor and virtual experience, and delivering increasingly engaging and accessible activities and experiences to diverse audiences; developing and enriching philanthropic relationships and programs necessary to ensure long-term sustainability; establishing the Museum and Memorial as a 'must-see' destination, and source of civic pride; and engaging and inspiring key constituents to contribute to the excellence of the National WWI Museum and Memorial.
Activities: Museum & Memorial Operations: Shortly after World War I ended, a group of Kansas City leaders formed a group to create a lasting memorial to those who served. In 1919, a fundraising campaign resulted in 83,000 residents contributing $2.5 million in 10 days (more than $35 million in current dollars). In 1921, a site dedication featured more than 100,000 people, including the five major Allied commanders the first time these individuals were in the same place at the same time. Following years of planning and construction, the facility opened in 1926 to a crowd of more than 150,000 people, including U.S. President Calvin Coolidge. At the time, it was the largest audience a U.S. president had ever addressed at one time. After decades of unaddressed deferred maintenance, the facility temporarily closed in 1994. Once again, Kansas City area residents rose to the challenge at this critical juncture and raised $102 million for renovations coupled with a major expansion. After achieving National Historic Landmark status and designation from Congress as America's official WWI museum, the expanded facility opened to the public in December 2006. Congress added a second designation in 2014, effectively renaming the organization the National WWI Museum and Memorial. Millions of people from all 50 states and all six inhabited continents around the world have visited to see the world's most comprehensive World War I collection. An institution of the people, by the people and for the people, the Museum and Memorial is Kansas City's gift to the world. As of December 31, 2019, the NWWIMM currently employs 39 full-time and 7 part-time staff. Additionally, in 2019 532 volunteers provided over 67,350 hours of service. Volunteers greet guests, provide expert tours, provide guidance, support special projects, assist with promotion, answer all questions, and help to lend a warm, human dimension to multifaceted stories of war and world history. The NWWIMM receives financial support from local, national and international sources. Donors include a wide array of individuals, corporations, and foundations whose support has helped to build enhanced programming and fund operational support for the Museum and Memorial. Admissions, facility rentals, retail, the Over There Cafe, and other initiatives are also successful revenue generating sources. The NWWIMM is proud to be ranked by national sources as follows:- among the top 12 military museums in the world by CNN- among the top 5 museums in the U.S. by Yelp- among the top 10 military museums in the country by USA Today- among the top 25 museums in the U.S. and the "Number One Attraction in Kansas City" by Trip AdvisorIn 2019, attendance at the NWWIMM, including events held in the Museum as well as the surrounding Memorial Hill parklands was more than 560,000 (an increase of 65% over fiscal year 2013), including more than 217,000 paid admissions. In 2019 guests from the six inhabited continents, 92 countries and 50 states visited the NWWIMM.
Collections Management and Research: The NWWIMM is the nation's only museum solely dedicated to preserving the history and examining the experiences of the Great War. The NWWIMM holds the world's most comprehensive collection of World War I (1914-1919) objects, artifacts and documents representing each belligerent nation that was involved, is the secondoldest collecting institution in the world and presents a comprehensive global interpretation of World War I and its enduring impact.During the Centennial Commemoration (2014-2019), the NWWIMM partnered with Kansas City's finest cultural, recreational, and civic organizations, as well as national and international galleries and institutions, to bring our patrons the most robust and memorable experiences to depict the Great War and its era. The NWWIMM holds a diverse collection of more than 342,000 World War I historical objects and artifacts, and active collecting continues to the present, with collection priorities responding to immediate research and exhibition needs, as well as unique opportunities when they arise. In 2019, the Museum accepted 172 new accessions into the permanent collection, each of which contains at least one object, with some containing hundreds of objects. Exhibitions offer insight on the beginnings of the war and its global nature-how and why countries went to war, how entire societies mobilized, and how the war affected civilians as well as military participants. The Museum and Memorial features several temporary exhibitions every year, and also partners with other institutions with exhibition loans. 2019 featured: the continuation of Crucible Life & Death in 1918; For Home and Country: The Great War and Kansas City; Lest We Forget; Color of Memory: Fabric Art of WWI; We're Home Now What?; The Vietnam War: 1945-1975; Devasted Lands; War Around Us: Soldier Artist Impressions; 1919: Peace?; Etched in Memory.
Community Education Programs:More than 19,000 individuals visited the NWWIMM on school field trips in 2019, including more than 5,100 subsidized visits provided by the Museum and Memorial and generous donors to support and enrich underserved students from diverse ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. Subsidized students receive a free lunch admission, and the schools are given a stipend to assist with the cost of transportation, support staff, and other ancillary costs. All of the students who visit the Museum and Memorial through a class trip participate in the School at the Museum program, which includes guided tours and focused activities. The NWWIMM serves educators nationwide through a variety of resources. With an audience generated through multiple national partnerships, including Scholastic, the Museum and Memorial hosts a multi-disciplinary and searchable education resource database, publishes a bi-monthly education newsletter, supplies virtual field trips through Google Arts and Culture and provides online content, lesson plans and activities that can be used both in the classroom and for online learning. Additional curriculum is developed through the NWWIMM's Teacher Fellowship program, which began in 2012 and currently is in partnership with the Gilder-Lehrman Institute with some of the best teachers in the country spending a week exploring the galleries, archives and rich research opportunities in Kansas City. In collaborations with the U.S. WWI Centennial Commission, a nationwide initiative began in 2018, to end in 2020, offering educators in all 50 states WWI educator workshops both online and in-person. With this multiple prong approach, the Museum and Memorial set a record with more than 20 million learner participations in 2019. The Museum and Memorial offers a diverse range of public programs open to all ages to forward our mission in remembering, interpreting and understanding the Great War and its enduring impact on the global community. The Museum and Memorial has several signature series that explore the legacies of WWI in dynamic and thought-provoking ways including annual symposia, the Mrs. Wilson's Knitting Circle program and the Pershing Lecture Series. In 2019, the Museum and Memorial hosted conferences for the centennial of the Treaty of Versailles both in Washington D.C., and Versailles, France. Many programs are presented in partnership with the region and country's vibrant cultural organizations, including the Kansas City Symphony, National Archives and United States Institute of Peace. Programs are created to examine multiple objectives, explore both historic and present impact and address diverse audiences. "Family friendly" programs, alone, had over 3,200 participants during 2019 via interactive programs like Hands-on History and "Winnie the Pooh Day." Community events are programs built to highlight the Museum and Memorial's unique space as "Kansas City's Front Porch" including Celebration at the Station, the Great Car Show and the seventh annual Truce Tournament, held in partnership with Major League Soccer team Sporting KC and The Soccer Lot. Started in 2013, the organization's Battlefield Tours are a multi-day immersive, international travel experience to former WWI conflict zones to learn about the cultural, political and environmental effects of the war. In 2019, the Museum and Memorial visited Turkey with a focus on the Battle of Gallipoli.For virtual learners, the Museum and Memorial provides a host of educational resources which includes digital exhibitions, webinars, virtual tours, and educative videos. The organization continues to expand content and diversify platforms, including partnership with Google Arts and Culture to meet the ongoing needs and interests of core audiences. Primarily featuring recordings of public program events, the NWWIMM YouTube page has accrued nearly 2.4 million views since its inception in 2011 with more than 10 million minutes watched in 2019 alone. Additionally, the Museum and Memorial launched an online collections database in July of 2013 which engages learners and researchers of all ages through the website theworldwar.org. In 2019, the Collections Department digitized and added 4,022 records to the database, raising the total to more than 40,700 items available for public access. Nearly 40,000 learners accessed the site in 2019.
NTEE category: Arts, Culture & Humanities
Secondary category: Social Science