Today, Willa Cather’s Childhood Home is a National Historic Landmark and historic house museum. Information about guided tours can be found at the National Willa Cather Center or by visiting the website. Image courtesy of the National Willa Cather Center.
American novelist Willa Cather, born in 1873, captivated readers with her vivid descriptions of life on the American frontier in works like My Ántonia and O Pioneers! The Willa Cather Foundation, located in her hometown of Red Cloud, Nebraska, has been educating the public about Cather’s life and work for over fifty years. Since 1998, grants from the NEH have allowed the foundation to expand its facilities and public programming, having an outsized impact on the rural town of 1,000. In 2020, an NEH CARES grant helped the foundation expand its reach by focusing on digital offerings while supporting staff salaries.
“We’ve long known of our work’s impact to the hearts and minds of the constituents we serve, but this [NEH] grant is a stamp of approval that our programs meet the highest standard of excellence in the public humanities.”
–Ashley Olson, executive director of the Willa Cather Foundation
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Willa Cather, photographed by Aimé Dupont in New York, circa 1912. Image courtesy of the National Willa Cather Center.
The Willa Cather Foundation owns and operates a number of historic sites in Red Cloud, where Cather lived from the ages of nine to eighteen. An NEH challenge grant in 1998 allowed the foundation to raise $825,000 and establish a $1.1 million endowment. The endowment provided the financial resources necessary for the foundation to significantly expand its operations through archival acquisitions and programming at sites such as the Red Cloud Opera House, which was renovated in 2003. Events such as theatrical adaptations of Cather’s works and children’s film screenings have made the Opera House an important cultural center in Red Cloud.
At the National Willa Cather Center, visitors can explore Cather’s life and writing in the American Bittersweet exhibit. Photo credit: Robert Olsen. Image courtesy of the National Willa Cather Center.
Willa Cather’s Childhood Home in Red Cloud during the time of the Cather family’s occupancy. From the WCPM Collection of the Willa Cather Foundation, at the National Willa Cather Center in Red Cloud. Image courtesy of the National Willa Cather Center.
In 2020, the foundation received pandemic relief funding through the NEH CARES grant program. In addition to allowing the foundation to retain its staff and restructure its exhibitions to better accommodate social distancing measures, the grant provided the resources necessary to develop online versions of its programming and thus widen its reach. The move to digital for events such as the 2020 Willa Cather Spring Conference allowed participation from people who would have never been able to attend in person. The foundation also developed a virtual tour of its sites and a digital collections gallery that allows users to view pieces in the foundation’s archive and experience sites that might otherwise be inaccessible. In addition to the more tangible benefits, NEH grants have offered the Willa Cather Foundation a sense of validation: “We’ve long known of our work’s impact to the hearts and minds of the constituents we serve, but this grant is a stamp of approval that our programs meet the highest standard of excellence in the public humanities,” said executive director Ashley Olson.
