Renovated Kansas Museum of History tells stories of ‘everyday people fighting for their beliefs’
Sarah Bell, director of the Kansas Museum of History, talks about the renovated gallery space during a Nov. 5, 2025, interview. The gallery asks visitors: What is Kansas? What was Kansas? and Why Kansas? (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
TOPEKA — When Sarah Bell became the director of the Kansas Museum of History in 2022 in the midst of a campaign to reimagine the museum’s gallery space, she focused her attention on a singular question.
What is Kansas?
She recalled on the Kansas Reflector podcast the day she sat down and began writing the question and answers, which would shape renovations at the 20,000-square-foot museum on the west edge of Topeka. She thought of sunflowers, tornados, the Dust Bowl, Bleeding Kansas, and the Wild West. She also thought about the stories of everyday people who led societal reforms, often with national implications, from the temperance movement to women’s suffrage to civil rights.
“You can look at any element of Kansas history, and you can see these everyday people fighting for their beliefs, pushing for those changes, making a home, coming up with all of these industries and ideas, and it’s like, that’s what we’re doing, that’s the core of this museum,” Bell said. “And so that was where I started to come up with this idea of, ‘What is Kansas?’ ”
The museum, which has been closed for three years, will reopen Nov. 22 with free admission, food trucks, music and special guests.
The new gallery space asks: What is Kansas? What was Kansas? and Why Kansas?
“We provide some answers, we provide some ideas, but these are reflective questions,” Bell said. “We want people to also be thinking about, what is this to me? What is Kansas to me? And that there’s an answer that they may have when they walk in, and there might be a different answer when they leave, and that’s OK.”
The gallery’s artifacts, including some that were never displayed before, are organized around four themes: bleeding, making, connecting and changing.
Visitors will be allowed inside the railroad cars, which remain in the gallery — along with the popular locomotive. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
The old favorites remain.
“People have asked me, ‘Is the train still there?’ And I say, ‘I don’t know where it would go.’ It is still there,” Bell said.
The “beloved artifact,” she added, is “looking shinier and cleaner than ever.”
A new, large ramp leads visitors to an overlook.
At the top: “You come face to face with what I believe is one of our most significant artifacts that was often lost up in the rafters, this 1914 Longren biplane,” Bell said.
A new overlook platform at the Kansas Museum of History gives visitors an up-close view of the 1914 Longren biplane, which previously “was often lost up in the rafters,” says museum director Sarah Bell. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
“And getting to see such a close look at this really makes you appreciate how far we’ve come with air travel today, and the courage it took those early aviators to go up in that,” Bell added.
The overlook platform also allows visitors to see the second floor of a log cabin, which has been a fixture in the museum since it opened in 1984.
Newspaper clips are projected on a screen in the Changing Kansas section of the history museum. The screen appears alongside Emporia Gazette publisher William Allen White’s printing press. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
William Allen White’s printing press from the Emporia Gazette now anchors the Changing Kansas section, alongside a floor-to-ceiling screen that displays important newspaper clips from the state’s history.
One of Bell’s favorite exhibits is a 1955 Ford grain truck.
She said it became clear from discussions with staff that the truck represents community. The cycle of harvest and planting “defines Kansas in every part of the state,” she said. Staff members recalled the image of grain trucks at harvest time getting ready to offload grain at silos.
There were “different staff members saying, I remember riding in that truck with my grandpa, getting to ride in and getting lifted up and in,” Bell said.
“All of these stories kept coming up,” she added. “And so we decided that this was one of those emotional connection stories, where people would see this and say, either, one, I have that truck, or either I did, or I remember my grandpa having a truck like that, or, well, this is a Ford, we had a Chevy, or whatever it was, but that those connections would be instant.”
Plus, she added, “it’s also just a really cute red truck.”
A 1955 Ford grain truck is among new artifacts on display at the renovated Kansas Museum of History. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
Some of the exhibits feature input from contemporary Kansas icons: Photos from Jim Richardson, narration by filmmaker Kevin Willmott and singer Martina McBride, and a new mural from artist Stan Herd.
The museum raised $6 million in private capital to pay for the renovation. Dimensional Innovations, an Overland Park design firm, handled the design and installation. Museum staff handled the work of removing artifacts, tearing down walls and removing carpet when the gallery closed three years ago.
Now, Bell said, people are going to see “a completely new space” when they walk through the doors.
“It’s going to be completely different,” she said. “And I think that’s OK. I think that for a renovation of this size, it should. We’ve been closed a long time, and we feel that.”
Herd is scheduled to be among the guests at the Nov. 22 reopening, along with VIPs, Civil War reenactors and Wizard of Oz characters. Admission is free Nov. 22-23. After opening weekend, admission will be $10 for adults, $8 for seniors, active military members and college students, $5 for those ages 6 through 17, and free for children 5 and younger. Parking is free.