One of Sarah Greenup’s favorite quotes from Elizabeth Miller Watkins, a Douglas County philanthropist, is “I will be giving and forget the gift.”
Greenup is the president of an alumnae group for Watkins and Miller Scholarship Halls, which are some of the University of Kansas’s more affordable on-campus housing options.
Elizabeth helped establish multiple institutions during her lifetime, including Watkins Hall in 1926, which was the first cooperative scholarship hall in the nation.
The Watkins Museum of History is celebrating Elizabeth’s legacy and 100 years of the hall with an exhibition open now through Saturday, Oct. 31 in the museum’s first floor Community Gallery, 1047 Massachusetts St.
The museum is always free and open to the public from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
“The impact of Watkins Scholarship Hall on the generations of women who have called it home over the past 100 years is impossible to adequately describe — and impossible to forget,” Greenup said in a news release. “Elizabeth gave generations of women an opportunity to pursue an education that she herself was never able to experience.”
The exhibition includes clothing and objects from Watkins Hall students, as well as reflections from interviews with them. There will also be text panels and photographs showing how the hall changed over time.
“The Watkins Museum loves to highlight Elizabeth Miller Watkins, whose generosity also led to our historic building staying in community use,” said Andrew Stockmann, the museum’s curator of exhibitions. “The research process for this exhibition was incredibly fun. Getting to call Watkins Hall alumni from the 1950s-1980s and hear how resonant their memories and relationships from the Hall remain today shows the impact of this cooperative living space on its residents.”
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