April 14th, 2022
To celebrate Earth Day and its current special exhibit, Kauffman Museum will host falconer Nate Mathews, Wichita, on Saturday, April 23, in the museum auditorium.
The Saturday program is at 10:30 a.m. and is free and open to the public. Admission to the museum is also free to program attenders.
The exhibit is “The Magic of Things: 5 Continents, 25 Centuries, 125 Years of Collecting.”
Items in the exhibit are not on permanent display, and many are being shown publicly for the first time.
Current and former staff selected more than 100 artifacts and animal specimens to illustrate how objects astonish collectors, donors and museum staff.
One section of “The Magic of Things” highlights natural history specimens, with items chosen by Bethel College Professor Emeritus of Biology Dwight Platt.
When the museum was established on its current site, Platt developed the prairie reconstruction and directed content for the indoor prairie exhibits.
To highlight the natural history area of “The Magic of Things,” the museum is hosting Nate Mathews, who has been a falconer for 25 years.
He will bring a live bald eagle to show, and will explain how he uses his birds to hunt. The program will take place indoors.
The final program associated with “The Magic of Things” will feature two of the exhibit’s curators.
Kauffman Museum exhibit technician Dave Kreider and director emeritus Rachel Pannabecker will talk about “Collecting for College and Community: Past, Present and Future” at 3 p.m. May 22, the exhibit’s closing day.
For more information on the exhibit, public programs and current COVID protocols, visit www.kauffmanmuseum.org or the Kauffman Museum Facebook page, or contact the museum at kauffman@bethelks.edu or 316-283-1612.
Regular Kauffman Museum hours are Tues.-Fri. 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Sat.-Sun. 1:30-4:30 p.m., closed Mondays and major holidays. Admission to the special exhibit and the permanent exhibits – “Of Land and People,” “Mirror of the Martyrs” and “Mennonite Immigrant Furniture” – is $4 for adults, $2 for children ages 6-16, and free to Kauffman Museum members and children under 6. The museum store is open during the museum’s regular hours.