Latest news with #WitteMuseum
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Witte Museum Launches Groundbreaking Statewide Initiative
100% TEKS Aligned Curriculum - Expeditions in Science - Now Available San Antonio, TX, June 13, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Witte Museum proudly announces the launch of Texas Museums 360, a bold new initiative that transforms how Texas students engage with science. Designed to bring the trusted expertise and wonder of museums directly into the classroom, this groundbreaking program kicks off with Expeditions in Science, a 100% TEKS-aligned, inquiry-based digital science curriculum created by Texas museums for Texas classrooms. In partnership with Space Center Houston, the Witte Museum has developed a custom experience 'that supports hands-on, phenomena-driven learning for fourth and fifth grades. Students will be scientists as they explore real-world specimens, interact with scientists in the field, and investigate the world around them through authentic, museum-powered lessons. Each unit in the bilingual curriculum is carefully designed to align with TEKS and STAAR testing standards while sparking curiosity, critical thinking, and discovery. 'Texas Museums 360 is a visionary leap forward in how we connect students to real science,' said Dr. Michelle Cuellar Everidge, CEO and President of the Witte Museum. 'At the Witte, we've always believed that learning should inspire wonder. With this initiative, we're ensuring that every child across Texas has access to the kind of engaging, hands-on science education that builds not just knowledge, but confidence and curiosity. We are proud to lead the way.' Early Adopters: Voyager SchoolsTexas Museums 360 is currently onboarding its first cohort of Voyager Schools—a group of pioneering educators and districts who will be the first to implement Expeditions in Science. These schools receive exclusive early adopter benefits, including price protection, direct access to curriculum developers, discounted hands-on activity kits, and even free field trips to the Witte Museum. They will help shape future iterations of the program while leading the charge in transforming how science is taught statewide. All participating schools will benefit from robust professional learning, including early training sessions and ongoing support throughout the academic year. The program positions educators as collaborators—engaging them in a network with their colleagues, empowering them with tools, content, and direct access to museum educators and subject matter experts. About Texas Museums 360Texas Museums 360 is a consortium led by the Witte Museum and Space Center Houston, bringing together more than 125 years of combined experience in science education. The initiative was built to grow—with plans to expand beyond science into history, culture, and arts education through museum-based, interdisciplinary digital curricula. Join the JourneyEducators, school leaders, and science coordinators are invited to schedule a demo and explore how Expeditions in Science can transform learning in their classrooms. For more information or to sign up, contact:emailhttp:// ### About the Witte Museum: Founded in 1926, the Witte Museum inspires people to shape the future of Texas through transformative and relevant experiences in nature, science and culture. Located on the banks of the San Antonio River in Brackenridge Park, the Witte is consistently voted San Antonio's top museum. Here, visitors of all ages journey through Texas Deep Time, uncovering untold stories of the people and forces that shaped Texas across millions of years to the present day. For more information, visit About Space Center Houston: Space Center Houston's shared purpose is to bring people and space closer together. Over 1.3 million visitors and more than 250,000 students and educators visit each year to connect with the significance of space exploration to pursue a path in STEM or follow along as incredible feats of human spaceflight continue to make new discoveries. Space Center Houston is owned by the Manned Space Flight Education 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and generates an annual $118M economic impact to the Greater Houston area. Space Center Houston is a Smithsonian Affiliate, the Official Visitor Center of NASA Johnson Space Center and a Certified Autism Center. Learn more at CONTACT: Katye Brought Witte Museum 210-790-6013 katyebrought@
New York Times
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Move Over Lone Ranger, Hopalong,Wyatt and Pals — History is Coming Your Way
Children in 1950s America grew up with a distinct image of the Old West through television heroes like the Lone Ranger, Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp and Hopalong Cassidy. They all had one thing in common, apart from always prevailing over the bad guys: They were white. Native-American actors had parts but rarely, if ever, did any of these shows include a Black actor as hero, villain or anything in between. That produced what historians have long recognized as a white-centric version of America's westward expansion, especially from Hollywood. The author C.T. Kirk and other historians posit that at least one in four cowboys was Black, many of them former slaves escaping the lingering cruelties of Reconstruction and the Jim Crow years. 'It was the narrative of television to push toward the all-American family as white,' said Kirk, author of the 2020 book, 'How the West Was White-Washed.' 'The idea was to take the importance off of one demographic to focus on another. The Western theology was that it was the white man's burden to settle the West, and everybody else was barbaric.' Black actors had been part of the nation's movie industry from the early years of the 20th century. Their projects, known as 'race films,' many of them westerns, such as 'Harlem on the Prairie' in 1937, featured Black casts playing almost exclusively to Black audiences. Films from the major studios were almost exclusively white, with only the occasional African-American actor before cinema slowly began integrating over the second half of the century, featuring such prominent actors as Woody Strode and Sidney Poitier. More and more these days, museums have taken up the cause of dispelling the perception cultivated by the entertainment industry of a whites-only West. With a variety of exhibitions, they are educating visitors to a more accurate telling of Western history by showcasing the role Black people played in everyday life across territories that would later become states. For nearly a year through early April, the Witte Museum in San Antonio presented a Texas-focused exhibition on the Black cowboys who worked on ranches and cattle drives. Many of the cowboys later became ranch owners, lawmen, rodeo stars, entrepreneurs and entertainers. Major parts of that show are now moving to the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles as part of a wider exhibition that follows Black people as they moved westward from Texas cattle ranches through the latter decades of the 19th century. The Autry's 'Black Cowboys: An American Story' opens on June 14, and shows how they helped develop the West. Their presence echoes today through the participation of Black people in rodeos, ranching and acting, and through Western-based themes in the music of recording artists such as Beyoncé, Megan Thee Stallion and Lil Nas X. 'I think we want to remind people that the history, and really the myth of the West and of America, is much more complicated and a great deal more diverse,' said Stephen Aron, the president and chief executive of the Autry, reflecting on the misperceptions of a white-settled West. 'The reality, in fact, is far more reflective of America, then and now.' Curated by Joe Horse Capture, vice president of Native Collections, and the senior curator Carolyn Brucken, the Autry show extends the Witte exhibit well into the 21st century in California. While many Black Westerners worked on the cattle trails, others found jobs on farms or helped build the railroads. It was menial labor for many, but some became ranch owners and entrepreneurs, the forebears of current California and Los Angeles area community groups such as the Compton Cowboys and Urban Saddles, which use horseback riding to promote the contributions of Black people in Western culture. Visitors to the Autry will learn about Bill Pickett, a Texas cowboy who invented rodeo bulldogging in the 1880s and later became one of the country's early African-American performers in Black-cast movies. Allen Allensworth, born a slave in 1842, became a military chaplain after the Civil War, rising to lieutenant colonel, making him the highest-ranking Black person in the U.S. armed forces at the time. Two years after retiring in 1906, he founded a Black settlement in California's San Joaquin Valley known as Allensworth. It remains a dot on the map today, with a population of 457, according to 2024 census figures, although less than five percent were African-American. The exhibition also celebrates women who embody Black roles in cowboy traditions. Bridget 'Biddy' Mason, a midwife and entrepreneur in mid-1800s Los Angeles, became the matriarch of a family that operated a livery stable and cattle-sale business that employed nearly a dozen cowboys. DeBoraha Akin-Townson became the International Professional Rodeo Association western region champion in 1989 and a year later the first Black cowgirl to reach the association finals. Chanel Rhodes's work as a horse trainer and equestrian led her to open a business in 2021 making wigs as decorative manes for horses. As Black people became ensconced in the western expansion, they experienced the same joys and tribulations as whites, a history unknown, even, to many contemporary African Americans, said Alaina E. Roberts, a history professor at the University of Pittsburgh and author of 'I've Been Here All The While,' a study of Black people and Native-Americans in the post-Civil War era. 'African Americans don't know any more about their history than any other group,' she said. 'They're going through the same education system that is not telling them about it.' The Autry Museum was founded in 1988 by Gene Autry, the 'Singing Cowboy' whose radio, film, recording and television career beginning in the 1930s made him one of America's most recognizable entertainers. He also owned professional rodeo companies and the Los Angeles Angels baseball team. The museum opened with his personal art and memorabilia as the foundation for a permanent collection. Today, its 100,000 square feet celebrate all aspects of Western culture through artifacts, photos, drawings and paintings, including a rich focus on Native American culture and essential elements of Western life for all who lived it — horses, firearms, ceramics, jewelry, Hollywood memorabilia and clothing: One exhibit in Black Cowboys will feature costumes worn by Black cast members of the 2021 western, 'The Harder They Fall.' The timing of the Black Cowboys exhibition has an ironic twist that is not lost on museum officials. While more than two years in the planning, the opening comes as American businesses, education institutions and government agencies are eliminating programs that embrace diversity, equity and inclusion in their hiring and operational practices. There are also ongoing debates over the starting point of American history — at the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 or the arrival of the first slave ship in 1619. Only the second acknowledges the role that Africans played in America's beginnings. Exhibitions like Black Cowboys, Aron said, underscore a truer American history, that it was not only whites leading America's Manifest Destiny in the 19th century. 'If we provide some new thinking about the way in which we've remembered or misremembered our history, that would be a valuable contribution as well as a valuable takeaway,' he said. 'I think museums do best when they spark conversation, when they provoke people to think anew and push people to ask questions.'
USA Today
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
San Antonio's biggest party is back, and it's more than just confetti and parades
San Antonio's biggest party is back, and it's more than just confetti and parades Certain places are synonymous with their events: New Year's Eve in New York, Mardi Gras in New Orleans (among other cities), The Masters in Augusta, Coachella in the Coachella Valley, and so on. For San Antonio, Texas, that event is Fiesta, and it's just around the corner. The citywide festival draws more than 2.5 million participants each year, according to 2017 data from the University of Texas at San Antonio Center for Community and Business Research. Sometimes called a party with a purpose, it also raises millions of dollars for the community through related events and activities. Here's what revelers should know about Fiesta San Antonio. San Antonio is a foodie paradise. Here's why. What does Fiesta celebrate in San Antonio? Fiesta began in 1891, with a single parade, the Battle of the Flowers, honoring the heroes who fought for Texas' independence at the Alamo and in the Battle of San Jacinto. That tradition continues to this day, but Fiesta has since ballooned into a more than weeklong celebration of San Antonio's diverse heritage and culture. The entire city gets into the spirit with more than 100 related events and festive decorations like papel picado banners and paper flower wreaths. The event has also become an annual fundraiser for local nonprofits and charities and, this year, scholarships for students across the state. What are the dates for Fiesta San Antonio 2025? This year's Fiesta runs from April 24 through May 5. Next year's Fiesta dates are April 16 through April 26. How long does Fiesta San Antonio last? Fiesta runs 11 days. Major events include the Fiesta Fiesta kickoff on April 24, the Texas Cavaliers River Parade along the River Walk on April 28, the iconic Battle of the Flowers Parade on May 2 and the nighttime Fiesta Flambeau Parade on May 3. Is Fiesta San Antonio free? Some Fiesta events are free, like the Ford Mariachi Festival also along San Antonio River Walk and Fiesta De Los Reyes in Historic Market Square. Others have fees, like admission to the Witte Museum to see its annual Fiesta exhibition, or tickets to the multi-day Night in Old San Antonio (NIOSA), which benefits historic preservation in the city. Spectators can also pay for VIP seating at parades. What is the purpose of Fiesta medals? Many local nonprofits and businesses operating in San Antonio create custom medals for each year's Fiesta. Some give the medals away, while others sell them to raise money for charity work or a nonprofit of their choosing. Proceeds from San Antonio River Foundation medal sales, for instance, support their work on the river and Raising Cane's is donating its medal proceeds to Morgan's, the San Antonio nonprofit behind the ultra-accessible theme park Morgan's Wonderland and other inclusive ventures for people of all abilities. Morgan's also has its own Fiesta medals. Many people collect the medals to show their support for their causes. Others simply like them to wear as flare. There's lots of that during Fiesta. A theme park 'for everybody': See inside ultra-accessible Morgan's Wonderland
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
San Antonio's biggest party is back, and it's more than just confetti and parades
Certain places are synonymous with their events: New Year's Eve in New York, Mardi Gras in New Orleans (among other cities), The Masters in Augusta, Coachella in the Coachella Valley, and so on. For San Antonio, Texas, that event is Fiesta, and it's just around the corner. The citywide festival draws more than 2.5 million participants each year, according to 2017 data from the University of Texas at San Antonio Center for Community and Business Research. Sometimes called a party with a purpose, it also raises millions of dollars for the community through related events and activities. Here's what revelers should know about Fiesta San Antonio. San Antonio is a foodie paradise. Here's why. Fiesta began in 1891, with a single parade, the Battle of the Flowers, honoring the heroes who fought for Texas' independence at the Alamo and in the Battle of San Jacinto. That tradition continues to this day, but Fiesta has since ballooned into a more than weeklong celebration of San Antonio's diverse heritage and culture. The entire city gets into the spirit with more than 100 related events and festive decorations like papel picado banners and paper flower wreaths. The event has also become an annual fundraiser for local nonprofits and charities and, this year, scholarships for students across the state. This year's Fiesta runs from April 24 through May 5. Next year's Fiesta dates are April 16 through April 26. Fiesta runs 11 days. Major events include the Fiesta Fiesta kickoff on April 24, the Texas Cavaliers River Parade along the River Walk on April 28, the iconic Battle of the Flowers Parade on May 2 and the nighttime Fiesta Flambeau Parade on May 3. Some Fiesta events are free, like the Ford Mariachi Festival also along San Antonio River Walk and Fiesta De Los Reyes in Historic Market Square. Others have fees, like admission to the Witte Museum to see its annual Fiesta exhibition, or tickets to the multi-day Night in Old San Antonio (NIOSA), which benefits historic preservation in the city. Spectators can also pay for VIP seating at parades. Many local nonprofits and businesses operating in San Antonio create custom medals for each year's Fiesta. Some give the medals away, while others sell them to raise money for charity work or a nonprofit of their choosing. Proceeds from San Antonio River Foundation medal sales, for instance, support their work on the river and Raising Cane's is donating its medal proceeds to Morgan's, the San Antonio nonprofit behind the ultra-accessible theme park Morgan's Wonderland and other inclusive ventures for people of all abilities. Morgan's also has its own Fiesta medals. Many people collect the medals to show their support for their causes. Others simply like them to wear as flare. There's lots of that during Fiesta. A theme park 'for everybody': See inside ultra-accessible Morgan's Wonderland This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: From medals to mariachi: What makes Fiesta San Antonio a must-do event
Axios
02-04-2025
- Politics
- Axios
How federal cuts could impact San Antonio museums, libraries
Museums and libraries in San Antonio could lose critical funding under a Trump administration plan to shut down the agency that supports them. Why it matters: The cultural institutions rely on federal money to meet their mission. Catch up quick: In a March 14 executive order, President Trump named the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) as one of seven agencies that should be "eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law." The latest: The institute on Monday put its entire staff on administrative leave for 90 days after a meeting with DOGE staff, NPR reported. Follow the money: The IMLS' largest program, called Grants to States, disburses roughly $160 million annually to state library agencies, including $12.5 million in fiscal year 2024 to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC). The federal grant makes up a third of the state agency's total budget. Per a request from the state agency reviewed by Axios, the 2024 money was earmarked for literacy and workforce readiness programs as well as to help train librarians. By the numbers: San Antonio museums and libraries have collectively received more than $2 million in federal support since fiscal year 2020. Zoom in: The Witte Museum has received a $250,000 grant from the agency to better care for 50,000 artifacts from its Texas History Collection, which includes furniture, ceramics, musical instruments and fashion accessories. What they're saying: "We have hopes that with the success of these IMLS-funded projects, we can continue this work to make our collection accessible to ourselves, but also to other researchers, and to make sure we're stewarding our collection for the future," Witte Museum CEO Michelle Everidge told the Express-News. "Something obviously really critical to museum work is making sure that we're keeping the community's memories and their treasures for the future." Other San Antonio institutions impacted by the IMLS include: The DoSeum — $250,000 each in fiscal years 2022 and 2024 for two traveling exhibitions — one to teach kids skills for the future and another called "Understanding Race and Building Unity." The University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries and Museum — more than $240,000 in fiscal year 2022 to digitize and catalog at-risk audiovisual items from the Institute of Texan Cultures. Artpace — $50,000 in fiscal year 2022 for a paid, after-school program for high school students to learn about careers in the arts. The Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, Bexar County's BiblioTech and the Army Medical Department Museum Foundation have also received funds since fiscal year 2020. Friction point: The IMLS' governing board issued a letter that explained its programs "cannot be paused, reduced, or eliminated without violating Congressional intent and federal statute." Between the lines: The elimination of the IMLS could lead to "devastation for museums, libraries and archives everywhere," Gabriel Solis, executive director for the Texas After Violence Project, tells Axios.
