New exhibit at Carnegie to show off home treasures

A new exhibit, “Home Town Collections,” is opening at the Carnegie Center for the Arts in Dodge City, including glassware, old menus, vintage silhouettes, musical instruments, family photos and Native American sculpture and jewelry.
    Some of the collection is already on display at the Carnegie, 701 N. Second Ave., but the official opening and reception will be held at the Carnegie’s Final Fridays at Five, Sept. 26, from 5 to 7 p.m.
    Dodge City High School Chamber Orchestra, under the direction of Adam Keda and Wendy Mickey, will perform.
    “We have extended the exhibit to run through the month of October,” said Carnegie executive director Dona Lancaster.  “We still are unpacking and setting up some of the items.”
    Joleen Fromm has loaned the center her large collection of menus from around the world, which include several from Dodge City restaurants that closed many years ago.
    “I was in junior high school when my parents traveled to New York and brought home some menus for me,” Fromm said.  “They continued to bring them to me when I went to college. Now menus are in hard covers and not very interesting.”
    One menu from the Harvey House in May of 1944 offers ham sandwiches for 15 cents, hamburgers for 50 cents, and filet mignon for $3.95. Menus from the El Vaquero Hotel from 1942 and the Airport Restaurant in Dodge City also are displayed.
    Dodge City’s Shangri La Restaurant menu included “house rules” by which dinner guests had to abide.  “Customers will whistle or shout for service in the normal manner… and not discharge firearms,” it reads.
    According to the menu’s instructions, “Customers will take their napkins out of their collars before they leave, and are not to shine their boots with the tablecloth.  We’re fixin’ to send yuh out in a mood of sullen appreciation.”
    Another interesting menu is one from the historic British ship, the Queen Mary, which was launched Sept. 26, 1934 and retired from regular passenger service Sept. 19, 1967.  The menu is from the Sir Winston Churchill Restaurant on the ship, which transported Churchill three times to conferences during World War II.
    Janice Unruh has contributed her collection of vintage silhouettes to the exhibit.
    Treasured family photos belonging to Stephanie Diell, who recently moved to Dodge City, also are on display in the exhibit.
    “I started taking photographs about four years ago after our son was in the hospital,” she said.  “He suffered from Pediatric Asthma, and after a really bad attack stopped breathing and had to be resuscitated.  As I sat there holding his hand, I tried to commit every part of him to memory for fear that the worst was going to happen – and that they wouldn’t be able to bring him back this time.”
    Diell took her cell phone out of her purse and snapped a photo of her sick son. 
    “I didn’t want any part of my memory to fade, as memories so often do over time," she said.
    Bob Salm is lending the Carnegie Center his collection of musical instruments from the early 1900s including a tuba that belonged to Chalk Beeson from the Dodge City Cowboy Band. Salm also loaned several Vogue picture records featuring orchestras and singers.
    Edna Gilman has brought her collection of ruby glassware to put on display, and Darleen Clifton Smith has offered cobalt blue glass pieces.
    Enid Scadden of the Boot Hill Bed & Breakfast is sharing the Victorian Violets china she has collected for her granddaughter in England.
    Joanne Whelchel brought her collection of Norman Rockwell Mother’s Day plates from 1978 to 1993, as well as items with a wolf motif.  Jennifer Nolan, a professor of art at the Dodge City Community College, is offering her collection of aprons to be displayed.