FAYETTEVILLE -- The Clinton House Museum opened this week for the first time since 2020, when the city's Advertising and Promotion Commission decided to shift responsibility of the place to the museum's nonprofit board.
The museum at 930 W. Clinton Drive is open with limited hours, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Admission is free.
The Tudor Revival-style home has served as a museum dedicated to the Clinton family and political history since 2005. Bill and Hillary Clinton were married in the living room of the house in 1975. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2010. The Clintons taught at the University of Arkansas School of Law.
The museum houses a number of exhibits and pieces of Clinton family memorabilia and attracts about 5,000 visitors annually. Distinguished lecturers usually speak there a few times a year, and the house has hosted a number of historically themed events. The garden features the favorite flowers of the nation's first ladies.
In September 2020, the city's Advertising and Promotion Commission decided to reduce the museum's operation as a cost-saving measure. As time went on, commissioners decided the museum's nonprofit board ought to take primary responsibility of the place. The University of Arkansas, Fayetteville owns the home, but the commission has operated it, paying the museum's expenses and providing staff.
The commission put $40,000 in its budgets for this year and last year to cover basic expenses associated with the First Ladies Garden, utilities, rent and maintenance. It has yet to discuss next year's budget.
This year's commission budget is about $4.6 million. It historically had put in about $250,000 per year to cover the museum's operation, with revenue of about $20,000 annually from donations.
The museum's nonprofit board is focused on fundraising, said Stephen Smith, communications professor emeritus at the university and president of the board. The board hopes to raise about $2 million over the next five years or so and build an endowment to power the museum's operation, he said.
Admission will remain free, Smith said. The board wants to keep operation on a shoestring budget and slowly ramp it up, eventually having the museum open six days a week as it was before. The commission may end up supporting the museum at a lower level, such as in the form of a grant, he said.
"If we can't raise the money, then I'm fairly realistic about saying we can't do this anymore," Smith said. "The university would take it back."
The university agreed to waive rent payment on the house for the rest of this year and 2023, according to Molly Rawn, chief executive officer of the city's tourism bureau, Experience Fayetteville. The commission governs the bureau.
Waiving rent will result in savings of more than $11,000 this year and about $17,000 next year. The savings freed up money, enabling the nonprofit's board to contract with a part-time employee to keep the museum operational on a limited basis, she said.
Reopening the museum was a board decision the commission supported, Rawn said.
"We were pleased that the board put forth the energy and effort to make that happen," she said. "The board did the work in getting the museum cleaned up and reorganized and to get it ready to be reopened."
The nonprofit backing the museum is becoming more self-sufficient, Rawn said. The goal is to have a relationship in which the nonprofit board is in the driver's seat of the museum's operation and the commission is no longer the primary financial supporter, she said.
The museum represents a significant piece of the city and state's political history, said Dustin Seaton, first vice president of the board for the Washington County Historical Society. Not every town boasts a home where a president and secretary of state got married, he said.
Regardless of one's political sway, the Clintons are internationally known figures, Seaton said. Outsiders often associate the Clinton name with Arkansas, he said.
"This is literally preserving our history," Seaton said. "This is the house that the Clintons lived in prior to their rise in state and national politics, right here in the heart of Fayetteville and the university system."
John and Becky Siekmeier of Grant, Minn., look at artifacts Friday, May 27, 2022, at the Clinton House Museum in Fayetteville. The museum closed in 2020 during the covid-19 pandemic and has reopened 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays with the intention of resuming daily operation. Visit nwaonline.com/220528Daily/ for today's photo gallery. (NWA Democrat-Gazette/Andy Shupe)
John and Becky Siekmeier of Grant, Minn., look at artifacts Friday, May 27, 2022, at the Clinton House Museum in Fayetteville. The museum closed in 2020 during the covid-19 pandemic and has reopened 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays with the intention of resuming daily operation. Visit nwaonline.com/220528Daily/ for today's photo gallery. (NWA Democrat-Gazette/Andy Shupe)More News
NoneClinton House Museum
The museum is the only one in the nation that focuses on the life and career of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, President Bill Clinton’s early political career and the Clintons as a family. The house is where they married in 1975 and where the couple lived while they were both teaching in the University of Arkansas School of Law.
The interior is filled with hundreds of collections, including:
• Memorabilia of the Clintons’ campaigns.
• A timeline of the couple’s Fayetteville years.
• A theater where visitors can see old political ads.
• A replica of the “War Room” where Bill Clinton ran his 1976 attorney general’s campaign.
• A replica of Hillary Clinton’s wedding dress.
• Family and campaign photographs.
For more information, go to:
https://clintonhousemuseum.org/
Source: Clinton House Museum