Reflections on 2023

As we look ahead with enthusiasm, we are grateful to more than 1,100 members and donors who supported our mission last year. Your gifts supported eighty-four programs, exhibits, publications, and events that served more than 94,000 people around the nation. We fulfilled our mission—to advance Willa Cather's legacy locally and beyond through education, preservation, and the arts—in many exciting ways last year. Here’s the top ten: 

• A Willa Cather sculpture by Littleton Alston unveiled in National Statuary Hall
• Reopening of the restored Willa Cather Childhood Home 
• Programs across the nation in commemoration of Cather’s 150th birthday
• An inaugural Willa Cather Residency for writers
• A summer Teacher Institute for K-12 educators
• Rehabilitation of a downtown Red Cloud building to create Hotel Garber
• A 20th anniversary of fan favorite programs at the Red Cloud Opera House
• The 18th International Cather Seminar in New York City
• A new permanent exhibit, Making a Place: A Long History of Red Cloud
• Cather news and scholarship published in the Willa Cather Review

The commemoration of Cather at 150 will continue this year as we celebrate the joys of reading and work to expand Cather's readership. We look forward to seeing you in Red Cloud or at one of our events in other locales.