Program areas at MHM
Soldiers memorial: mhs operates and manages the soldiers memorial military museum under an agreement with the city of st. louis. Mhs opened the soldiers memorial and the court of honor in november of 2018 after an extensive $30 million revitalization and renovation project. The city of st. louis partnered with the mhs after consideration of our extensive experience with museum operations. The mhs is an accredited museum by the american alliance of museums. Prior to operational effects from the covid-19 pandemic, soldiers memorial greeted approximately 35,000 annual visitors- it has not yet returned to that level of visitation, but attendance is gradually improving.operations: soldiers memorial military museum fulfills three primary roles for the st. louis community. First, it serves as a public memorial to remember those who gave their lives in service. The museum building and the outdoor court of honor are home to memorials to world war i, world war ii, the korean war, the vietnam war, and service members who have given their lives while in service since 1975. Secondly, with its multiple meeting rooms, soldiers memorial hosts a wide array of public programs that educate on st. louis' role in service since its earliest days. In collaboration with external partners, the meeting rooms are also used to provide direct services to veterans. The meeting rooms are also used by many veteran service organizations for their recurring meetings. Finally, soldiers memorial serves as a museum that hosts a 4,000 square foot permanent gallery that shares the story of "st. louis in service" from the revolutionary war through today. The memorial is also home to a 4,600 square foot temporary gallery which will host "vietnam: at war and at home" from november 11, 2022 through may 27, 2024 sharing the experiences of st. louisans during the vietnam war.
Exhibitions: the museum presents a number of exhibits each year, both permanent and temporary. The temporary exhibits are a combination of exhibits that focus on the st. louis story created by in-house teams and traveling exhibits that tell national and global stories developed by the country's leading museums. In the last few years, exhibits have focused on topics ranging from st. louis's contributions to popular music to st. louis's rich built environment- with visitors diving into music history and even being invited to color on the walls of the Missouri history museum. Past exhibits have showcased everything from a painting given to charles lindbergh for his wedding to the photographs that won pulitzer prizes; have shared stories of why st. louis is called the gateway to the west and how st. louis women fought for a voice even before they had the vote and how they played an instrumental part in the passage of the 19th amendment. In 2022, the museum continued to rebound from the pandemic, seeing steady attendance gains and the return of more school groups, building on the positive trajectory of the previous year.
Library and collections and digital initiatives: the Missouri Historical Society holds the premier regional history collection documenting st. louis, Missouri, the Mississippi and Missouri valleys, the Louisiana purchase territory and the american west. An integrated and multi-format collection, it serves an audience of diverse local, national and international readers and researchers. Library and collections and digital initiatives includes the expenses associated with stewardship of the collection overall covering salaries and supplies associated with conserving, cataloging, processing, housing, digitizing and making accessible the collections. Mhs collections are accessible to the public through the library and research center, exhibitions at the museum and soldiers memorial, through loans to other institutions, our online website including the online collections search, and various social media platforms. In 2022, in-person visitation to the library and research center was 1,452 and due to the installation of compact shelving, was closed to researchers for a portion of the year. At year's end there were 1,452 in-person visitors. Staff provided remote reference services to 3,368 researchers via phone, fax, mail, or email, this reflects a post-pandemic stabilization of user numbers and a figure closer to pre-pandemic requests, a decrease of 18% from 2021. There were 195,026 research visits to mohistory.org and 1,901,946 viewed pages to our mohistory.org website. The collections currently consist of more than 179,000 artifacts in a variety of formats that document the everyday life of the diverse inhabitants of our region. The library contains more the 90,000 volumes. The manuscript collections comprise more that 7,900 linear feet of original manuscript records. The photographs and prints collections contain more than 1 million images. The sound and moving images collection includes more than 74,000 items. In 2022, there were 114 donations made by donors to the mhs collections along with 7 purchases of items using mhs acquisitions funds.
Education and community engagement (ece): this department offers programs that engage and educate audiences of all ages and abilities. Members of the ece team create programs that appeal to a wide audience, develop field trips and other educational efforts geared to k-12 students, and coordinate programs aimed at our youngest learners. After a period of time in 2020-2021 during which this work was largely done virtually, a robust slate of onsite and in-person programming returned in 2022, including the Missouri history museum's popular twilight thursdays concert series, the launch of thursday nights at the museum, and increased numbers of onsite student field trips. Using capabilities built during the pandemic, the ece team offered and will continue to share a wide array of programming in person, virtually, and in hybrid formats in the years ahead.
Marketing and communications department: the marketing and communications department provides marketing and public relations activities for the Missouri history museum, the library and research center, and soldiers memorial military museum. Activities include media relations, marketing, advertising, social media, graphic design, promotions, crisis communications, etc. The marketing and communications department prepares and distributes media material to print, electronic, and online media to promote institutional exhibitions, events, programs, and general awareness. Departmental personnel coordinate all interviews related to the institution. The marketing and communications department staff oversees all advertising and marketing opportunities and promotional partnerships, including developing marketing plans, placing all paid advertising related to the institution; and establishing strategic marketing collaborations. The graphics team members within the marketing and communications department design and produce institutional collateral material; quarterly member magazine; banners; brochures; direct mail pieces; posters; web-based electronic promotional and marketing material; and the social media team within the department coordinates the institutional presence across all social media channels, including facebook, twitter, pinterest, and youtube.
Publications: the publications department provides several services for the museum. In addition to publishing books each year (new titles or reprints of books previously published by the museum), they also publish an annual members magazine and maintain an online magazine with continuously changing articles. They provide editing services for other departments in the museum. In 2022, this department published the award-winning "coloring st. louis: a coloring book for all ages and "bosnian st. louis: between two worlds." The latter is one of the first accounts of the history-making resettlement of bosnian refugees in st. louis in the early 1990s and explores how these valued community members changed st. louis and its surrounding region.
Museum services and public history: the museum services and public history divisions provide administrative/supervisory support to library and collections, digital initiatives, exhibition and research, the publications division, and marketing and communications including participation in strategic planning efforts, budget oversight, board committee responsibilities, and various initiatives.