Letter to the Editor: Another Museum by the MDAH?

VICKSBURG, Miss. – by Gregory E. Bingham – Plans for a Vicksburg Interpretive Center were finally made public on November 20, 2024 with two events held that day. They were advertised as community engagement and an opportunity for the citizens of Mississippi and more specifically Vicksburg to have input into the project. The first was at the History is Lunch program at the Two Museums in Jackson where Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann voiced his support for the plans. The second took place that evening in the Visitor Center at the Vicksburg National Military Park (VNMP) with Ward 2 Alderman Alex Monsour and Mayor George Flaggs, Jr., and Sen Briggs Hopson in attendance. Katie Blount, the Director of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH) led the meeting and introduced her staff member Megan Bankston who is the manager for the project.

Representatives of the architectural firm, Perkins & Will, and the exhibition designer, Gallagher & Associates, made beautiful but romanticized presentations demonstrating their knowledge of the Vicksburg Siege and explained how the building and the exhibits would or may look.
The MDAH and The Friends of VNMP and Campaign (Friends) who are two of the three organizations spearheading this project only wanted to engage the public on the topic of architecture. The third organization involved in the project is the VNMP and no one represented that agency during the meeting.

By focusing on the architecture, Ms. Blount failed to state the missions of each of the three partnering organizations and how they naturally culminate in the state-owned Vicksburg Interpretive Center. The mission of the MDAH is to “collect, preserve, and provide access to the archival resources of the state.” Ostensibly, the mission of the Friends is to support the Federally owned VNMP which was chartered by a congressional Act to commemorate the lives lost and preserve battlefields in the Vicksburg area.
The most obvious of two non sequiturs in mission is that the Friends are now advocating for and accepting donations for the benefit of a state-owned museum when their stated mission is to support the Federally owned VNMP. In reality, the Friends are now the friends of the MDAH as they are committed to raise $80 million of the estimated $120 million needed to build the Center with the state committed to the remaining $40 million. As a privately operated organization they are free to change their mission, but at the very least there should have been a press release notifying the public and their donors of the significant change in mission.

The other non sequitur is how the MDAH, whose mission is to preserve archival material, is in the museum and interpretive field. In the Fiscal Year ending June 30, 2024, 53% (nearly $16 million) of the department expenditures of nearly $30 million was spent on museums. This includes the Two Mississippi Museums and several other properties across the state. Ms. Blount only spent 9% of her budget on the original mission of archives and records which was less than the 10% which she spent on administration. This is monumental mission creep at best and perhaps missing the target altogether when nowhere in the title or mission of the department do we see the word museum.

So how does the VNMP original mission of commemoration and battlefield preservation get drawn into a museum venture? Well, it too has experienced mission creep and the Park Superintendent, Carrie Mardorf, points to a document from 1990 where the Secretary of the Interior authorizes “interpretation.”
Laying aside the mission creep in the two governmental agencies, should a government at any level be involved with the interpretation of history? Is interpretation a proper governmental function like national defense, maintenance of roads, or funding of a judicial system? Are museums and interpretation necessary for a proper functioning and well-ordered country or state? And if it is, then whose interpretation will be presented in these museums? Well, perhaps one might say that a government can or should build a museum if it is not overly costly or perhaps well attended and draws visitors from across the state and country, thus boosting tourism in the local economy.

So, let’s explore the track record of the MDAH Museums Division in cost efficiency and visitor attendance. As noted earlier, the annual operating costs for these museums was nearly $16 million. The latest published visitation numbers to the state museums were about 50,000 in 2023 with the Two Museums contributing only 36,000 to the total. The cost per visit, then, is about $300. The individual admission fee to the Two Museums is $15. So, despite Ms. Blount’s claim to have a good financial record, her museums are not financially self-sustaining and depend heavily and nearly exclusively on state funding to pay for 44 full-time equivalent employee positions.

By comparison, the Old Court House Museum (OCHM) in Vicksburg has an annual budget of approximately $150,000 with 3 full-time equivalent employees, and they received 25,000 visitors in 2023. The cost per visit is about $6 and adult admission is $7. So here we have a museum that is self-sustaining with little to no state or federal support drawing half the visitors of the MDAH museums. In the recent past, the visitation numbers for the OCHM were nearly comparable to the Two Museums when the Vicksburg Visitor Center administered the cruise line contracts. Currently, Vicksburg Old Town Tours, a privately owned organization, administers the cruise contracts. Old Town removed the OCHM from their tour offering. This is staggeringly incomprehensible when the Old Court House is arguably the most historically significant building in Vicksburg from the last half of the 19th century. The financially lean OCHM does incredibly well with visitors, but it also holds an important archive of primary source documents which are being digitized to make the collection more easily available to scholarly researchers. So, the OCHM is taking up the slack in archival work left from Ms. Blount’s failure to adequately fund the archives and records at the MDAH.

By comparing the MDAH museums to the OCHM we see that there is nearly no correlation between size of budget and the visitation numbers. Spending $120 million on the Vicksburg Interpretation Center does not automatically translate into increased tourism or a significant positive impact on the local economy. What is guaranteed, however, under Ms. Blount’s administration is an annual drag on the state treasury somewhere in the neighborhood of $5 – $10 million and an interpretation of the 19th century events in Vicksburg through the lens of Critical Race Theory and other liberal leaning ideas of the political party of her husband, Senator David Blount, who is the Vice Chairman of the Senate Democratic Caucus. The divisive ideas of the Democratic party are only held by roughly half the citizens in Mississippi based on the results of the recent election. There is no better evidence of the division than the Two Mississippi Museums. Mississippi has one history, and while complex and ugly, we should only have one Mississippi Museum, and it should be financially self-sustaining with better attendance.

The MDAH Board of Trustees should address the mission creep with Ms. Blount and reconsider the Vicksburg Interpretive Center, and encourage her to improve the financial and visitor performance of her current museums. The MDAH Board should also consider recommending someone from Vicksburg when board seats become vacant in the future and the Lt. Governor and Governor should ensure that it happens. The Board of Friends should return to their original mission of supporting the VNMP which is without a doubt a national treasure and deserving of your generous labor and time and fundraising expertise. The USS Cairo needs to be in a climate-controlled building. The Pemberton Headquarters restoration needs to be completed. It is obvious that Lt. Gov. Hosemann and Sen Hopson have funds available and want to spend it in Vicksburg for these and many other projects, so Friends should advocate for grants from the MDAH to aid in preserving historic buildings and artifacts regardless of ownership rather than building something new.

Gregory E. Bingham is a retired CPA with nearly 20 years of Governmental and Not for Profit experience. He is a graduate of the decorative arts program sponsored by the Smithsonian Institute and now lives in Vicksburg and is restoring an 1853 Greek Revival Planters Cottage which he calls the Thrift Kain House.

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