State Curator Hanna Howard oversees about 90,000 artifacts at the State Historical Museum of Iowa. She is the first woman to serve in that role since the State Historical Society was founded in 1857. Photo: Whitney Warne
Writer: Anthony Taylor
Museum work is, more than anything else, the history of collaboration. Artifacts tied to historic events tend to grab people’s attention, but whether you’re talking about founding a new state, fighting a war or building a city, you’re really talking about ordinary people pulling together to get the job done.
State Curator Hanna Howard is acutely aware of how important those everyday collaborations are. Talk to her, and that word — collaboration — comes up repeatedly, steady as a heartbeat.
Last summer when she stepped into her official role at the State Historical Society of Iowa, she was struck by just how collaborative and expansive her job can be. She works with a small but passionate team of museum professionals to safeguard, catalog and preserve about 90,000 artifacts from Iowa’s past.
Before becoming the first woman to hold the position in the historical society’s 169-year history, Howard coordinated Iowa’s participation in National History Day, helping to organize dozens of student competitions across the state. She helped guide hundreds of students on their journey from local classrooms to Washington, D.C., a job that couldn’t happen without the effort, input and experience of history and social studies teachers from nearly all of Iowa’s roughly 300 school districts.
“I had never before worked with a group of stakeholders who were so geographically spread out or were coming at a project from so many different race, gender and economic factors,” she said. “It’s one thing to be in a graduate school classroom and theorize about how you interact with the people you serve, but to do it in practice is very different.
“I’ve never been one to approach my work with much ego, but even so, a job of that size will instill you with humility,” she added. “You can’t possibly do it alone. You must defer to the expertise of others at times.”
That collaborative heartbeat is not just something that guides how she approaches her work; it’s at the bedrock of who she is. And nobody understands that more intrinsically than her partner, Jordan Mix.
The pair met at Drake University in 2015 and by 2017 they both knew they were all in. When Howard moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, for grad school, Mix moved as well. When Howard finished her master’s degree in public history at North Carolina State and received a job offer from a museum in Park City, Utah, Mix found a job managing a coffee shop so Howard could pursue her work. Then, when Mix was enticed to apply for a job with Iowa Safe Schools in early 2020, Howard didn’t think twice about packing up and heading back to Des Moines.
“I can’t overstate how important that collaboration and support is,” Howard said of Mix, who uses they/them pronouns. “The acts of service, the sacrifice I see them make for the benefit of our relationship, for the benefit of our children, and to do it with such joy, is mind-blowing to me.”
At work, Howard draws upon her colleagues’ experience and encyclopedic knowledge of the State Historical Museum’s collection and its history to inform her decisions — which stories to mention during speaking engagements, which artifacts to highlight during tours, what new acquisitions to pursue and more.
These are all decisions she’s capable of making on her own, but she firmly believes that to approach her job any other way would be a disservice to her talented colleagues as well as the public they serve. History benefits from multiple perspectives.
“A deference to expertise that is not my own — a shared authority over the past — is something I was taught on Day One,” she said.
That philosophy shapes how she approaches a role that is both collaborative and highly public. While she has never been one to seek out the spotlight, she often serves as the museum’s most prominent voice and has taken to heart her responsibility as a storyteller.
“Nobody is going to trust you to be an authority on our shared history if you don’t care deeply about it,” she said. “It’s not enough to just know the facts, it has to mean something.
“That passion and excitement have to always be there, regardless of the audience. The two college students I take on a collections storage tour are just as deserving of a fulfilling, engaging experience as 100 people on the State Fair walking tour.”
Howard stepped into her new role in July and is already beginning to shape her long-term priorities. But if you ask her about the future, that steady heartbeat of collaboration beats through. She talks about finding new ways to help tell stories that aren’t hers alone to tell — stories of Indigenous cultures, for example, and people of color — serving as a steward who collects, protects and amplifies them alongside the communities they represent.
Last summer, just before she applied for the new job, Howard gave birth to twins. Thinking about those two growing babies, about how they’ve fundamentally altered her and Mix in amazing ways, she allows herself, just briefly, to think about the legacy of her work and why she does it.
“I want them to understand why I am a historian,” she said. “It makes me want to be that much more careful, that much more thoughtful in my work. Because two people who I care more about than anything in the world are going to look back on it and say, ‘This is what she did.’”
A few of her favorite things
Photos: Duane Tinkey
Since March is Iowa History Month, we asked State Curator Hanna Howard to share a few of her favorite artifacts at the State Historical Museum of Iowa.
Althea Sherman’s charcoal drawings (above)
Exhibit: “A Delicate Balance”
An artist by training, Sherman pioneered new methods for studying bird behavior at her family home in National, in Iowa’s northeast corner. (I grew up watching birds with my grandparents in their backyard in Ankeny.) Her drawings of chimney swifts demonstrate that environmentalism has roots not only in lab-based research but also in everyday observation and creative expression.
“The Secret of the Old Clock”
Exhibit: “Iowa History 101”
Mildred Wirt Benson, who wrote most of the Nancy Drew books under the pen name Carolyn Keene, lived and worked in Ladora. Nancy was one of my childhood heroes, so the museum’s copy of this book holds a special nostalgia for me.
Wacochachi’s ink drawing (above)
Exhibit: “Iowa’s People & Places”
The history of the Meskwaki people and their settlement in present-day Tama, Palo Alto and Marshall counties is critical to understanding the whole of Iowa’s past. This pen-and-ink drawing depicts the life and worldview of Wacochachi, the Meskwaki leader who made it. It’s one the earliest known drawings by an Indigenous person from the Midwest, and I feel privileged to see it at my place of work.
“War is Not Healthy” poster (above)
Exhibit: “Civics in Action”
I’ve long been fascinated by protest art — and art as protest. This poster was created by Another Mother for Peace, an organization founded by women who opposed the Vietnam War, including Donna Reed, the Oscar-winner from Denison. Since I recently became a mom, this artifact has taken on new meaning as I think about the kind of world I want to create for my children.
LGBTQ Rural Outreach Project banner (above)
Exhibit: “Iowa’s People & Places”
This banner is one of the museum’s artifacts that means the most to me. Created by Waterloo’s New Hope Metropolitan Community Church in 1984, the banner commemorates the congregation’s efforts to affirm the lives of their LGBTQ members and neighbors in Black Hawk County. It reminds me that queer people are everywhere and always have been.
