Jerry Eisterhold, owner of Eisterhold Associates in Kansas City, designs museums around the country. Locally, he has completed the Harry S. Truman: His Life and Times exhibit at the Truman Museum & Library; the Money Museum at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, and the John Baker Film Collection Exhibit at the American Jazz Museum. His serious hobby is winemaking. This conversation took place at his offices outside Parkville, which look out on a six-acre vineyard.
What is one of the museums you are working on that hasn’t opened yet?
We’re working on several civil rights museums, including the Sit-In Museum in Greensboro, N.C.
How do you approach a sit-in museum?
Since it’s inside the actual former Woolworth’s building where the event occurred, we’re using the escalators and hallways to give people a dark ride, a kind of audio-visual immersion in who these people were and what that moment in time was like. When they come up the last escalator, they are right at the lunch counter.
What will visitors experience at the lunch counter?
There was a half wall of mirrors behind the counter, so we’re rebuilding that with giant screens. You’ll see giant images of what the lunch counter looked like at the time and then go through the story.
Is that the new reality for museums — that you can’t just have people walk in and look at things and read?
We’ve always done experiential things since the company was founded (in 1979). At the Rosa Parks museum we did in Montgomery, Ala., there’s a bus, and by watching the bus windows you can see what she did and said that day and how events unfolded in surprising ways.
You’re also working on a national hurricane museum. Where is that located?
Lake Charles, La.
Because of Katrina?
Not originally. It’s ironic — the folks there wanted to do a memorial for the 50th anniversary of Hurricane Audrey, which killed at least 500 people in 1957. The day we received their request for a proposal, Katrina hit.
No way.
Way. No one could answer the telephones down there for several days. When we finally got through, they said they might have to make the museum about hurricanes in general, not just Audrey. Then, days after they reissued the documents, Rita hit. There was seven feet of water in the building where we had talked to these people.
What will visitors be able to experience there?
There will be a lot about the dramatic history of how (people came to understand hurricanes). In Columbus’ time, people thought hurricanes were these fierce storms that just hit. Benjamin Franklin was one of the people who first figured out these are storms that move. Then later, people figure out they are storms that turn.
There will also be a working National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather station in the museum that visitors can see and an operatic live performance playing off the Mardi Gras culture about citizens’ risks and responsibilities during a hurricane. That got added after we attended a conference where the presenters said people don’t understand what the risks really are with a hurricane and what they should do.
Are there any museums you’d like to build but haven’t been asked to?
I’m trying to get some interest in Route 36 across northern Missouri where you have Mark Twain and Walt Disney and the Pony Express and Jesse James. There are interesting stories there.
Why do you have vineyards here?
Interview conducted, condensed and edited by Cindy Hoedel, choedel@kcstar.com.
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