Dine with President McKinley at Bender's!

We are excited to announce a unique partnership between the McKinley Presidential Library & Museum, Canton Food Tours, and Bender's!

CLICK HERE to buy tickets!!  Tickets are only available through Canton Food Tours.  See below for payment options.

Here is the information from the Canton Food Tours website:

Dinner With The President | 6:00-9:00pm | Wed March 25th

You Are Invited!

This one-of-a-kind dinner is a fundraiser for the William McKinley Presidential Library and Museum.

Bender’s Tavern, in conjunction with Canton Food Tours, sets the scene and menu.  Inspired by the 1897 Inaugural Ball of President McKinley, the dinner is inspired by the original menu with appropriate and delicious twists by the talented chefs at Bender’s Tavern.

Christopher Kenney, McKinley Museum Education Director, who portrays William McKinley, will make an appearance so that we can interact and enjoy “dinner with the President”.

President William McKinley

Cost includes multi-course meal at Bender’s Tavern including dessert, taxes, and restaurant staff gratuity. Alcoholic beverages (or other beverages) may be ordered on your own.

Parking: Parking is available at Bender’s Tavern

Payment: If paying by credit card, register at link above. If paying by check, make check ($70.00/person) payable to Canton Food Tours and mail to:

Canton Food Tours
555 Market Ave N
Canton, Oh 44702

Proceeds go directly to the McKinley Museum.

Inaugural Ball Menu 1897

All payments needed 3 days in advance of event unless other arrangements have been made. No refunds for cancellations within 48 hours of event start time.

Food allergies? Let us know by emailing Barb@CantonFoodTours.com in advance of the event. On-the-spot accommodations cannot be guaranteed.

Concert tickets now on sale

(If the video is cut off on your browser, visit this link to see the video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EK1ZecQlJe8)

Tickets for the Canton Comic Opera Company's 1897 Inaugural Grand Concert are NOW ON SALE!  Click here to purchase tickets.

Director of Education Christopher Kenney will be presenting a pre-concert lecture about President McKinley.  We hope to see you there!

For more information about the concert, click here.

Sneak peek of the dresses...

Last week we started to dress the mannequins with pieces from the Sheila Markley Black Collection.  What fun!  It's days like that when I can't believe I get paid to do what I do.

We started with the evening gowns, since those are the most form fitting and need to have a perfect fit.  Next we did the Little Black Dresses.  We got a few cocktail dresses done before we ran out of time.  I am resisting the urge to keep going, but I know my volunteer Kathy would be disappointed if I didn't wait for her to help!

We will do the suits last, since there is more room to "fudge" the fit of them than there is for some of the dresses.  Next on the list is to find some slips to go under some of those transparent 1920s dresses!

Here are a few photos of what the dresses look like in storage right now, waiting for their turn in the spotlight:

Thank you to our sponsor!

1897 Inauguration Concert in June

We have partnered with the Canton Comic Opera Co. to present President McKinley's 1897 Inaugural concert!

The concert will take place on Sunday June 28, 2015 at 3:00 PM at Umstattd Hall at McKinley High School.  Director of Education Christopher Kenney will present a pre-concert lecture at 2:30 PM.

Tickets will be available through the Canton Comic Opera Company.  We will let you know when they go on sale!

For now, mark your calendar for this unique musical event!

Exhibition invite

After struggling with this for DAYS, I finally designed a postcard for the exhibit that I like!

 The design of the postcard is a close up of the bodice of this cocktail dress from the 1980s:

 
I had originally started the exhibition design with purple in mind, but after figuring out the above, I'm changing it to black and white.  Elegant and sophisticated!

If you've been to the Keller Gallery, you know that our movable walls are all black.  We can't exactly display The Little Black Dresses against a black background!  So I've been shopping online for silvery sparkly curtains to create that section of the exhibition. 

There are many, many choices.  Right now I'm leaning toward silver sequins with sheer over the top.  Glitzy, but not over the top.  I'll let it simmer a bit before I make up my mind.

This week we made our final selections for what will be included in the exhibition and we put the rest back in storage.  There are 1 or 2 too many in each section, but we think the fit on the mannequin might solve that issue for us.  There are a few strapless gowns, and we're not sure how well they will stay up.

Again, thank you to our sponsor for this exhibition: