A step forward or a step backward may be the result of today’s meeting of City Manager Mark Rohr and Architect Chad Greer, with the boards of the Joplin Museum Complex. As reported here in the Joplin Globe, Rohr and Greer will put on a presentation with the hope of convincing the board members to affirm the hope of moving the Joplin Museum Complex to a restored Union Depot.
We wish Mr. Rohr the best of luck, but given the past attitudes of the board members, as well Museum Director Brad Belk, the presentation will likely be falling on deaf ears. While the city controls the purse strings which fund the museum, the city council so far has been unwilling to exert much in the way of pressure on the museum on what would be a spectacular combination of locating Joplin’s history inside Joplin’s history.
The reluctance to use the Depot as a new home for the museum stranded on the edge of town is akin to the same apathy which resulted in the destruction of many of Joplin’s most treasured architectural features. It’s far easier to cast an old building onto a rubbish heap to join others than to envision it as part of a brighter and more imaginative future of the city.
Belk and those old, white nattering nabobs that sit on the JMC board are as helpless as boobs on a boar. Undoubtedly they will reject what Rohr has to offer because they are still holding out for someone, perhaps even the city, to shell out for a new building that is never going to happen. They’re probably hoping Rohr will move on so that they can get some stupid dupe to work with them and their silly ideas.
I’ve said it here once and I’ll say it again: Fire Belk, hire a real museum professional, start cranking out grants, and move forward.
It would also help if the museum board was actually composed of people who could financially support the museum, fund raise on its behalf, and bring in donors who will write checks. The board needs youth, diversity, and vision instead of cranky old tightwad men.
[…] We mentioned earlier today that City Manager, Mark Rohr, was to give a presentation to the boards that oversee the Joplin Museum Complex on moving from Schifferdecker Park to a restored Union Depot building. Thanks to Morgan Schutters, of KODE tv, we now know how the meeting unfolded. […]