Benton House and Studio Museum

Though situated in a labyrinthine moneyed neighborhood with too many switchbakcs, the Benton House and Studio is worth the twenty extra minutes of driving around in circles. The guided tour lasts a solid forty-five minutes (more if you have lots of questions) and is worth every penny, possibly more, of the $2.50 in entrance fee.

I love finding good small museums. I never expect too much so that I won't be disappointed. Therefore, I'm often not disappointed. But small museums are usually extremely appealing, even if you don't know or care very much about a subject. While the "exhibits" might not be flashy, since budgets are usually pretty tight, tour guides tend to be very well informed about their subject. Maybe it's a script, maybe it's their life's dream, but almost invariably they have a passion about the area they supervise.

No matter how interesting a subject may be to you, without a knowledgable guide nothing would make sense. Conversly, an informative guide can make a blank subject come alive and take on a personal meaning with an individually. Fortunately, the Benton House and Studio Historic Museum staffs the latter.

Our guide was Michael. He is a historian by trade, not an artist and that made his presentation more interesting, focusing on the family side of Benton (as it was, indeed, the family home) and the history of the world goings on in general, than on the artistic side. He pointed out details, such as the daughter's paintings on the windows of the foyer, as well as her "rehearsal" works on the bedroom window. Or that the house was one of the first to have electricity, as the original owner was on the board of the newly formed KCP&L.

The house itself is in the state left when Benton and his wife, Rita, died. They were the third and last owners, and when they passed the property was turned over to the Parks and Recreation Dept. to become a museum, a testament to the great art and bond of the Benton's. I was struck by how up to date the kitchen was (up to 1975, anyway), but you wouldn't necessarily associate the creator of WPA era murals with microwaves and fancy dinner parties. The studio, according to Michael, is in much better state than it was left. The studio, half of a carriage-house-turned-garage, is where Benton created much of his work and also were he died in 1975. The entire area was in a state of deliberate chaos, but has been organized considerably for the sake of the museum. It houses some of his record collection, including Harmonica Virtuosi, as well as a display of some of Benton's transcriptions of Classical music for harmonica, using his own notation system. It also displays Benton's thrifty nature and creativity, with coffee cans full of paint brushes and sketches, models, and dioramas used in creating the vast works that made and retained Benton's reputation.

It is that sort of thing, that bit of trivia that won't come up in the galleries or art history classes, which make visiting small, local museums so rewarding. They can make a person and time period come to life, more fully formed than in a book, with more depth than simply viewing the works themselves.