Visitors to Baylor University’s Mayborn Museum can now journey across centuries and cultures to learn about the people who shaped Central Texas.
At the “Cultural Crossroads” exhibit that opens Friday, they can see a traditional Wichita Indian-style grass house as well as a tipi, a traditional beaded bag and a cradle board created by a Comanche artist.
They can listen to historic music from Baylor University’s Black Gospel Archives in a recreated church space. And they can see cables from the original Suspension Bridge that made Waco the chief crossing point of the Brazos River in 1870.
“One of the main goals for this exhibit was for it to be more of a co-creation with the community and with the people whose stories that we’re telling,” said Rebecca Tucker Nall, Mayborn Museum assistant director of exhibits, communications and visitor services. “So we really tried to prioritize those relationships, both with the tribes and then people within our community as well.”
The exhibit, which has been in the works for more than three years, is the first of several planned phases to expand and renovate the museum. The next phase will focus on nature and ecology.
The museum worked with community members, the Comanche and the Wichita, the Science Museum of Minnesota and the Waco Hispanic Museum to bring this exhibit to life.
Visitors can walk into the grass house – which is 18 feet tall inside – and listen as the process of harvesting grass to build these houses is explained on a video. The house is similar to those that once stood at the Waco Indian village in what is now downtown Waco.
Although the Mayborn Museum previously had a Wichita-style house made with museum materials, this one was built using real grass and traditional techniques over a two-year period.
The grass was harvested from a prairie near Lexington, Texas.
“We wanted visitors to be able to experience what it’s like to be inside, even the smell of a grass house, it piques your senses,” said Trey Crumpton, Mayborn Museum manager of visitor experiences. “And we know for museum education, when you combine two or more senses in a gallery, it helps people create memories.”
In another part of the exhibit, museum attendees can view documents and names of Tejano families along with artifacts from Tejano history, including a lasso and a replica of a Colt 1847 Walker revolver.
“There aren’t necessarily that many objects remaining, or they’re in private family collections, or they’re in attics,” Crumpton said. “They’re in Grandma’s house, and she may not think anybody cares about it, but hopefully this exhibit kickstarts people telling those stories and telling their stories through objects.”
The Mayborn Museum received items on loan from the Waco Hispanic Museum including a stovetop used to heat up food while working on the railroad and a Guadapulanos medal from the 1920s.
Attendees can also experience life in the 1800s in a frontier log house. The log house had to be taken apart and put back together for the Cultural Crossroads exhibit.
Attendees will be able to play music from Baylor University’s archives of Black gospel music. Inside a church replica, Black church history and music is on display, including a book dating back to 1875 from New Hope Baptist Church.
“An important part of New Hope’s institutional history, that firsthand primary source documentation of everything that happened in the life of that church,” Crumpton said.
