Hoover Museum’s renovation campaign receives $1 million boost

In the season of giving, a million-dollar gift from Joanne and the late Ernest “Ernie” Buresh of Cedar Rapids is bringing a bit of London to the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch.

It’s also bringing the Hoover Presidential Foundation closer to its $20 million fundraising goal for a state-of-the-art museum makeover.

  Buy Photo

The Timeless Values | Modern Experience campaign, unveiled in 2021, now stands about 73 percent complete. Another major milestone came earlier this year, with a $1 million gift from Myron “Mike” Wilson of Cedar Rapids, and his late wife, Esther Wilson.

The campaign’s culmination is to be celebrated Aug. 10, 2024, the 150th anniversary of Hoover’s birth in West Branch. The museum then will close so the public spaces can be renovated. The work is expected to be finished by mid-2026, said Mundi McCarty, president and CEO of the Hoover Presidential Foundation.

Joanne Buresh has designated her gift for the “London Life” exhibit, showcasing a personal slice of Herbert and Lou Henry Hoover’s life, which parallels the Buresh family’s love for traveling and sharing experiences with their children, including visits to the museum complex when daughters Wendy and Sandra were young.

Impact

Ernest Buresh, a respected, influential banker and philanthropist in Eastern Iowa, died April 24, 2022, at age 95.

His obituary noted: “Ernie believed strongly in giving back, both of his time and his financial resources,” making “significant contributions” to various programs at the University of Iowa, area hospitals, libraries and museums, including this posthumous gift.

The Hoover gift honors the life and legacy of the 31st president of the United States. In office from 1929 to 1933, Hoover was known as the “Great Humanitarian” for his hunger relief efforts at home and abroad during and after both world wars.

“Ernie admired President Hoover for all that he did for our country and the world, recognizing that he and his wife deserved more recognition for their intellectual and humanitarian contributions that have often gone unnoticed,” Joanne Buresh said in a statement announcing the gift.

McCarty said Hoover trustees and family members got to know Ernie Buresh and “discuss with him his passion for the state of Iowa, for our region, for history, as well.”

She also counts herself fortunate to getting to know Joanne and Wendy Buresh and see how important Iowa history is to them, at the state level and beyond.

“The Hoover story is a global one, so they very much recognize the impact that their support could have on this project,” McCarty said.

The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum opened on Aug. 10, 1962, Hoover’s 88th birthday. His friend, former President Harry S. Truman, joined him in dedicating the facility. Hoover died two years later, in New York City. He and his wife, a native of Waterloo, are buried on a hill overlooking his humble birthplace cottage in West Branch.

A major museum building renovation in 1992 increased the museum’s footprint from 32,000 to 44,500 square feet. Thirty years later, this latest renovation will incorporate 21st century advances to engage audiences of all ages in the exhibits.

Video excerpts

“Right now is the perfect time to reinvent the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library-Museum,” granddaughter Margaret Hoover, a political commentator and host of “Firing Line” on PBS, says in a video explaining the project’s goals. “We’ve had an entire technological revolution — an information revolution.

Matthew Solari, creative director at BRC Imagination Arts in Burbank, Calif., the partner in the project’s concept design, said the project presented an opportunity “to create a museum that is vital, that is immersive, that is emotional that brings all kinds of theatrical storytelling and wizardry — and that tells a classic American story.”

“We want to activate their sense of civic partnership, their civic responsibility to be a part of making the world a better place,” he adds. “That way, (Hoover) becomes more relevant today than he has been anytime in the last 50 years.”

The BRC firm specializes in creating premiere exhibit spaces, and turned the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum into what’s said to be “the first major Experience Museum.”

“Education is less like filling a bucket and more like lighting a fire,” BRC founder Bob Rogers notes. “We're going to tell that story in a way that captures the imagination, inspires people, and leaves them hungry for more.”

Adds Margaret Hoover: “You want to build a world class presidential library museum, tell a story in a new way and in a creative way that will resonate with a new generation, a new audience of people.”

Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com