National Willa Cather Center News

Willa Cather’s My Ántonia was among the fifty titles selected by the National Endowment for the Arts for their 2024 Big Read initiative. In partnership with Arts Midwest, the NEA Big Read supports community reading programs designed around a single NEA Big Read book, with an aim to broaden our understanding of our world, our communities, and ourselves through the joy of sharing a good book.

In August, the Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded over $23 million in grant funding through its Museums for America Program

This week, the Red Cloud Chief ended its 150 year publication run. Through its pages, we came to learn much of what we know about Webster County history and Willa Cather's place in it.

Today is National Book Lovers Day and a fine day to celebrate a love of books and reading, as Willa Cather always did—and that the Willa Cather Foundation continues to do in her name. "Cather and the Readerly Imagination" was the theme of our 69th Annual Willa Cather Spring Conference but we celebrate Willa Cather's words every day as they are the reason for our mission—which you can support in many ways, including a browse in our National Willa Cather Center Bookstore (in person or online!).

Are you interested in serving on the Board of Governors of the Willa Cather Foundation? For the fiscal year of board service beginning January 1, 2025, the Foundation is accepting applications for new members of the Board. Applications are due by September 5.

Our visitor services coordinator and expert guide, Nick Powers, recently completed the Nebraska Master Naturalist Program, a week-long course of classes and activities that provides certification for its conservation and education volunteers. Classes ranged from plants and animals, to ecosystems, environmental education, and citizen science. Nick gained deeper knowledge of the different plants and animals of Nebraska, as well as conservation efforts in the state.

The National Willa Cather Center’s Collections and Archives in Red Cloud, Nebraska has benefited from a National Endowment for the Humanities grant that enabled the purchase of storage furnishings and tools recommended by a 2023 Collections Assessment Report. 

This summer, before the exterior painting began at the Cather Second Home Guest House, we turned to the expert paint analysis provided by David Arbogast of Davenport, Iowa. David has conducted paint analysis at some of our other historic sites in recent years, including: the Burlington Depot, Pavelka Farmstead, and the Willa Cather Childhood Home (and in the early 1990s at the Miner House before it was donated to the Willa Cather Foundation by Nancy and Bernie Picchi).

The collections and archives at the National Willa Cather Center have always, since our founding, played a critical role in helping our visitors gain a deeper understanding of Willa Cather. Our museum's collections rotate through our historic sites, providing context and helping readers, teachers, and students to imagine the settings of Cather’s many works set in Red Cloud.

Red Cloud's historic Burlington Depot, in service for more than sixty years before it was decommissioned by the railroad, connected Red Cloud to the larger world. The technologies and processes that enabled such a connection were managed by dozens of men (and a handful of women) under the watchful eye of the station master. We hope the new interpretation at the Depot will give visitors a glimpse of daily life at the station.