The Eastern Kentucky Humanities Commission is a trade association of museums and historical sites in eastern Kentucky, with nearly 60 organizations under their banner.

The commission hopes to use that combined experience to preserve and celebrate Eastern Kentucky's art history and culture.

Museums are sort of like little islands out in the ocean or whatnot.

And I think of, you know, they all are kind of independent of one another.

They're doing their own thing.

They're trying to fundraise on their own.

They're trying to do things in which, you know, they're very independent and largely based on the expertise of the staff they have or the financial means available to them.

In talking with other museums, especially local museums, we reached out to them and they said, wow, we are actually experiencing the same problems or we're having the same issues ourselves.

How did you do that?

And we invited a lot of the different museums and people represented to come see us, kind of talk to them.

And it really spurned and opened the conversation.

The commission functions pretty much as it like a trade association for the humanities in eastern Kentucky, whether it be history, whether it be the arts, whether it be music and sharing.

Eastern Kentucky's history and actually preserving it.

So if you would think of a roundtable, no one sits at the head, but everyone has an equal seat.

Six months ago, we started well, we endeavored in this to create a new organization for the humanities in eastern Kentucky.

We out of this experience with our renovation phase here at the museum, we started talking with each other and sort of decided, let's go see these other museums and see how these guys are doing.

Basically, that's how it came out of it.

We wanted to have a conducive organization working for their interest and for their benefit and to market for them to provide areas of expertise, for them to help provide funding for them in ways that they otherwise would not possibly be able to have as one single organization.

That's what the commission pretty much functions as, the fact that now, instead of one museum on its own, now you have a combined 40 counties out of 120.

Roughly a third of the state in which you have experts and planners and people from all of the different museums.

Ours was taken away by some of these places, how well curated they are and they they're wonderful people.

But we we want to help elevate them and make them better, bigger and better than what they are now.

And we just really took it upon ourselves to do this out of this effort that we sort of out of the effort with our museum and our experience here.

It is important for us primarily to preserve and to promote the history of Kentucky, of Eastern Kentucky, to have it here as long as we can for future generations, and to let them know to educate them about what we have.

It can be daunting.

It can be There's highs and lows of museums trying to make them successful, trying to make them move forward.

And we want to make sure that everyone knows throughout the commission that, you know, we have people we are here to support you in the ways we can.

We want to make sure that, you know, you have the means and necessary ways.

That Eastern Kentucky Humanities Commission is planning on holding a meeting with all of its members coming up this spring.