Robin Seage Person says overseeing Cottonlandia Museum has required a lot of work and learning but continues to be rewarding.
The museum averages 7,000 visitors a year, including people from all over the world. The Summer Discovery educational program continues to be popular, and the new military history exhibit has been a welcome addition.
And there's plenty of variety in Person's job.
"It's different every day," she said. "It allows me to express some measure of creativity. I've learned a lot about teaching, that's for sure.
"But mostly I like it because it's different. And it's fun; you get to do a lot of fun things."
Those include teaching classes about crafts, nature and many other topics. Person estimated that 90 percent of her time between April and August is spent with these classes.
Last year, they filled 510 of 540 openings in Summer Discovery, and the classes for the younger children filled up within an hour. Person said this enthusiastic reesponse shows "a huge need for more of that type of activity for that age range of kids in our community."
Person said she is continually looking for ways to get the community involved, such as the community photography exhibit coming up in September and October.
Past community exhibits have proven to be some of Cottonlandia's most popular, both in the number of submissions and the number of viewers.
For example, a photo scavenger hunt was held one year, and Person said that was "probably the best thing we've ever done."
This year's fall photography exhibit will be open to anyone, and more information will be posted later on the Cottonlandia Web site. It won't be a contest - just an exhibition of talent.
And, Person said, "anything that puts us out in the community more, I'm all for."
The museum opened in 1969 and moved to its current location in the mid-1970s. As its name implies, it initially was intended to focus mainly on cotton, but it "rapidly became a storehouse of community artifacts," Person said.
The museum has 250 to 300 members at a time. Friends of Cottonlandia, a volunteer group, now numbers about 60. Person said they have good people from all over the community representing cotton production, education and other different fields.
Person has served as its executive director since October 1996. She had previously worked at the Old Capitol Museum in Jackson and Kingman Museum in Battle Creek, Mich.
She has a bachelor's degree in biology from Albion College and a master's degree in history from Western Michigan University with an emphasis in museum studies. Her background was in artifacts, displaying, curating and preserving, but Cottonlandia represented her first chance to take on management responsibilities.
"I found it's a lot harder than it looks, because I have to spend so much time on administrative things," she said.
She said funding is more difficult because revenues don't keep pace with rising expenses.
"Every year it gets harder and harder to do," she said. "Every year our utility bills go up, every year our insurance bills go up, just like everybody else - only our revenues don't go up much."
The budget is generally about $106,000 a year. The
facility receives an average of $46,000 a year from the Leflore County Board of Supervisors, and other funds come from donations, grants, membership and admission fees and charges for educational events.
Past grant sources have included NASA, the Mississippi Arts Commission, and the Mary Emily Wilson Charitable Trust, a local foundation that gives from $4,000 to $10,000 for nonprofits and institutions that help the handicapped.
With grants more competitive than ever, it has become more important to seek out new members and encourage existing members to renew.
Community involvement also is important to Irvin Whittaker, who has served on Cottonlandia's board for six years and is now its president.
Whittaker said he wants to make the community more aware of what Cottonlandia has for both adults and children.
"Cottonlandia has a lot to offer the people don't know about," he said.
He said the museum also has an excellent 17-member board in place. Elizabeth "Pann" Powers is vice chairman.
The grant committee works hard to pursue funding and is always looking for resources, he said.
Another promising prospect is an effort by the Foundation for the Mid-South, which has selected Leflore County as one of two pilot sites for its Communities of Opportunity initiative. The aim behind that is to improve communities through a combination of private philanthropy and citizen involvement.
"We're hoping if this Community of Opportunity comes about, that Cottonlandia can be a major player in that," Whittaker said.
Person has more plans for the Cottonlandia building.
She said her next project is to complete a paleontology wall that focuses on prehistoric life in what is now Mississippi. A section of the wall, with just studs and drywall, has been built.
Then there are various other smaller projects, including labeling and other tasks.
Her long-range goal is to put a new educational annex in the front of the building with space for classes, program areas, an auditorium, a bigger kitchen and more collection storage space.
Johnson-McAdams has drawn up plans for this addition, and the cost has been estimated at $1 million.
Up to now, she said, she has had to learn how to "work around the constraints of an existing building that was not designed to be a museum."
For example, part of the building has cinderblock walls and fluorescent lights, not typical for a museum, and Person said the building's "flow" isn't how she'd design a museum.
With 14,000 square feet of space, the building is running out of room for new items. This makes it hard to take donations for "anything that's bigger than a breadbox," Person said.
"At your house, if you have too much stuff in your closets, you can have a garage sale, but we can't do that," she said.
They still have some artifacts that were taken on loan, but they don't accept loans anymore, she said.
"We'll still happily take photographs or flat document-type things, but bigger stuff is harder to do something with," Person said.
