A Lifetime of Museum Visits
November 19, 2020
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This blog entry is the third in our series, "My Most Incredible Experience(s) In Arts & Culture Spaces."
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Growing up, Danielle Wetzel always loved art and art culture. In fact, her earliest memory of visiting museums took place in Dallas, Texas, when she was just 7 years old.
Wetzel grew up in Kansas, but she and her family would regularly visit their grandmother who lived in Amarillo, Texas. One summer, Wetzel’s grandmother planned a trip for the kids to experience flying in an airplane for the first time. The plane traveled through wispy clouds and sunshine, safely landing in Dallas after an hour in the air.
One of the stops their grandmother planned in Dallas was a visit to a natural history museum, complete with the mounted remains of the biggest animal Wetzel had ever seen.
“As soon as I walked in, the first thing I saw was a gigantic prehistoric turtle the size of the room,” Wetzel remembers. “To this day, I’m still enamored by how big dinosaurs are. I try to picture what it would have been like to come upon a dinosaur when they roamed the earth — to experience their life-sized nature.”
Wetzel has a very active imagination, so she appreciates anything and everything that’s visually striking, she said. The shrunken head on display at the Museum of World Treasures came to mind as one of these visually impressive artifacts.
“I’m obsessed with our shrunken head because it’s so weird to think that it was once a real-sized head!”
Wetzel and her husband actively seek out museums whenever they travel — sometimes they visit art museums, history museums, discovery centers, or even all three, if they can. Wetzel’s been to the Philadelphia Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (aka the MET), and never had enough time at any of them, she said.
“If there’s an art museum, I’m going and will stay until they close for the day and have to ask me to leave,” Wetzel said with a laugh. “I could sit in an art museum all day long; it’s just a fun mindspace to be in. I love the educational aspect of it, and it’s definitely something I’ll continue to do with my kids. They’re going to grow up going to museums.”
Wetzel says one of the best ways to build in regular museum visits with her family is to purchase memberships. She, her husband, and two daughters all have current memberships to the Sedgwick County Zoo, the Wichita Art Museum, Exploration Place, the Kansas Aviation Museum, and of course the Museum of World Treasures.
“To me, memberships are very convenient. It’s a one-time fee and it lasts the whole year. You don’t have to schedule it, so if you don’t have time to visit this week or next, you know you can go the next time. And if we leave the house once a week and have all these places to choose from, and I don’t have to pay a dime to visit any of them because I’ve already taken care of that piece, then the membership pays for itself,” she said.
For Wetzel, memberships also enhance the overall experience, she says. Rather than visiting the Zoo and feeling the pressure to visit each and every animal exhibit to get her money’s worth, having a membership means she can visit and only spend time in the Children’s Farms, for example.
“I don’t have to make my family feel rushed, tired and worn out from one visit,” Wetzel said. “Instead, I can literally go, see one exhibit at a time, learn everything I can and know that I have another free visit the next time we come out. Plus, you’re supporting local art that needs that support to survive so it can provide those experiences for others.”
Wetzel considers herself an advocate for the arts, and is currently earning her masters degree in arts leadership and management.
“As someone who claims I’m an advocate for nonprofit places, it’s important to support my local places by being an active patron. There is a dire need for art support, and I do my part to support the arts by buying memberships.”
Out of all Wetzel’s visits to museums, zoos, science centers, and more, one of her most profound experiences took place at the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial.
“My husband and I went, and I remember that they’d collected all of the sunglasses that were found in the rubble, along with all the wallets found scattered and piled them altogether. They had a section of the wall that had blown up and had purposely not cleaned it. All the rubble was still there — all of this destruction that happened right here in front of me, and it was just insane to think about. It wasn’t a ‘happy’ moment, but definitely memorable and resulted in a total goosebumps feeling.”
“I know there’s a lot of differing opinions about what should be on display, especially those that are heartbreaking, like our Nazi flag,” Wetzel added. “But it’s our history, our past — even if it’s tied to a really sad story or experience, we need to remember those stories and experience them. We need to learn from them.”
Wetzel has been working at the Museum of World Treasures for three years now, serving two years as the Visitor Services Director. Her favorite part is the artistic freedom she has to complete the job — from designing the look of the store to decorating for events in the banquet space. Working front-of-house in the Museum Store, Wetzel has witnessed and experienced some touching moments.
“One of my favorite moments to see is when Mike (Noller) is present, and guests are checking out the giant T.rex skull behind the blocked off display area. Mike will go up and say, ‘This is Stan and he’s a cast, which means he isn’t a real T.rex skull. Would you like to touch him?’ And he’ll take down the display barrier and let the kids touch the cast and feel that it’s not real.”
“Then he’ll put his head in Stan’s mouth and ask, ‘Can you act scared?’ and show them how to pose. The kids will squeal with excitement at putting their head in a T.rex’s mouth, and the parents get to take fun photos while the kids get a cool bonus experience that totally made their day.”
Once, when Wetzel was changing the color of the light that shines into Stan’s head, a fascinated and curious little girl watched her change the light.
She asked the child, “Would you like to pick the color?” To which the little girl responded with an excited “Yes!” and that her favorite color was green.
“I thanked her for helping me change the color, turned away to work on something else and the next thing I know, I hear her little voice telling someone that, ‘That nice lady let me pick the color!’ I love moments like that when we can give our guests an extra special experience to look back on.”
(Photos courtesy of Danielle Wetzel, Visitor Services Director.)
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