On the evening of Friday June 3 The Kentucky Museum on the WKU campus hosted an open house event for the Bowling Green community to come see new exhibits and have a chance to win summer prize packs.

 The new exhibitions include Crazy Quilt Mania and Nuestro Hogar Kentucky, Our Kentucky Home: Hispanic/Latin American Visual Art in the Commonwealth.

The Crazy Quilt Mania was recently opened and showcases 23 crazy quilts from the museum’s permanent collection. This exhibit also has examples of related textile and non-textile fancywork, illustrations, and advertisements. 

The Nuestro Hogar Kentucky, Our Kentucky Home: Hispanic/Latin American Visual Art in the Commonwealth. This exhibit will be open from June 3 to June 29. It showcases 30+ works by 20 Kentuckians of Hispanic or Latin American heritage.

The Kentucky Arts Council partnered with alDía en América and Casa de la Cultura Kentucky to invite Hispanic, Latinx and Latin American Kentuckians to share their visual art at the museum. 

Visitors are handed a piece of paper that tells visitors where the exhibits are located. The was a booth set up for visitors to write their name and contact information to enter for a chance to win door prizes. These door prizes include:

• Summer Fun for Two Pack including 2 one-day tickets to Holiday World, a LetsRoam Date Night Scavenger Hunt Pack for 2 good to any city, and an Adventures from Scratch: Date Night Edition book.
• Night at the Ballpark Pack including a $30 Roosters Gift Card and a 4-pack of tickets to a Bowling Green Hot Rods 2022 game.
• BG Fun Pack, including tickets to the Historic Railpark & Train Museum, tickets to the Corvette Museum, a LetsRoam Family Scavenger Hunt Pack for up to 10 people, and an Adventures from Scratch: Family Edition book.
• Lexington Fun Pack, including a 4-pack of tickets to Kentucky Horse Park and a LetsRoam Family Scavenger Hunt Pack for up to 10 people.

This open house was also used to raise awareness for the Kentucky Museum for All Fund. In 2019 the Kentucky Museum was awarded a three-year grant from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation that afforded free general admission to all visitors, the Kentucky Museum for All Fund website said.

The Kentucky Museum for All Fund is an endowment to provide sustainable funding while supporting diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility throughout the Museum, the Kentucky Museum for All Fund website said.

There is a spot on the table where visitors could make a gift to the museum. It also has a paper with a QR code that visitors could scan that will take them to a website to get more information about the Kentucky Museum for All Fund.

According to the Kentucky Museum for All Fund website there are still 26 days for the Kentucky Museum to meet their goal of $10,000. They are at 75% of that goal at this moment.

The Kentucky museum is open Wednesday through Saturday, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.

“Basically we’ve been free for the past three years thanks to a grant,” Tiffany Issehardt, development and marketing manager, said. “We would like to keep it that way and an open house is a great way to raise awareness.”

Makaio Smith can be reached at [email protected].