The Museum at Prairiefire in Overland Park is planning to open a new permanent exhibit called “Kansas Revealed.”
The plan is to build an 8,000-square-foot annex building southwest of the existing museum near 135th Street and Nall Avenue. That new space will be the home to “Kansas Revealed,” said Executive Director of the Museum at Prairiefire Terri Thompson.
The exhibit is slated to debut next year
- The “Kansas Revealed” exhibit is still coming in 2025, according to the museum website.
- The goal is by the end of that year, Thompson said.
- “That’s a very large task,” she told the Post earlier this year. “I would say we’re probably 55% of the way done.”
- She said the new exhibit plan started to take shape in late 2022.
- It will focus on the Kansas City area, as well as the wider state of Kansas, highlighting the history of the area and the natural environment, such as plants, ecosystems and animal life.
Museum at Prairiefire opened a decade ago
- The Museum at Prairiefire opened in 2014 and is the tourist attraction at the heart of the wider Prairiefire development’s STAR bond district on 135th Street between Nall and Metcalf avenues.
- It focuses on natural history, science and technology with an emphasis on the Kansas City area.
- The museum also houses KC Urban Advantage, a science, technology and engineering education program backed by Black & Veatch for youth from underserved communities, particularly from 10 local Title I schools.
- Additionally, the museum offers a science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (or STEAM) preschool program.
Museum at Prairiefire is seeing some changes
While Thompson said the natural history and science focus of the Museum at Prairiefire is very much the same, there will be some changes in the next few years.
For one thing, the new “Kansas Revealed” exhibit will take the place of the traveling exhibits previously expected to be a big part of the museum’s rotating educational opportunities. It will be “wholly our own,” Thompson said, and the materials could be rotated in and out over time.
Plus, the Museum at Prairiefire will be the first permanent home for the College Baseball Hall of Fame. The city officials and leaders from the College Baseball Foundation announced the decision in January.
The Hall of Fame exhibit space is expected to open late next year as well, and comes after a months-long lobbying effort that pitted Overland Park against dozens of cities that expressed an interest.
Keep reading: College Baseball Hall of Fame tapped Overland Park after year-long lobbying effort
