Walking through the Kentucky Museum, students are exposed to women in office in Kentucky Women Rising, decor throughout different eras in the Decorative Arts Gallery, the man behind the famous travel guides and baking mixes in Recommended by Ducan Hines and many other exhibits.

Several exhibits such as Gazing Deeply about Mammoth Cave and Kentucky Women Rising were set to open during the shutdown, so the museum had to reorganize the schedule so people could still see them, said Brent Bjorkman, director of the Kentucky Museum.

The Kentucky Museum is a “teaching museum,” so the exhibits are made to be utilized by teachers, said Bjorkman.

“Kentucky women rising is about women holding office over time,” Bjorkman said. “We use a lot of our political memorabilia collection. We connect with political science classes. We make sure that those particular entities that seemed most well suited to using it as a teaching tool, know about it.”

Currently the museum offers free admission because of a grant from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation. 

“I’ve always believed that a university museum should be available to all people independent of need,” Bjorkman said. 

Last July, the Kentucky Museum started a podcast called “Dime Stories.” The podcast is hosted by Tiffany Isselhardt, development and marketing manager of the Kentucky Museum, where she dives deeper into the exhibits.

During the shut down, the Kentucky Museum started 360 virtual tours.

“Sandy, our collections curator, had been working on the whiteworks quilt exhibit, and it is now installed,” Bjokrman said. “Just in the last couple of weeks, we’ve created a virtual component for that. I think going forward virtual components of every exhibit will continue.”

Debra Murray can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @debramurrayy