Looking to the Future

The Witte Museum has for 80 years embodied the almost universal goals of museums: to engage the imaginations of young and old and provide encounters with artifacts and information only available in a museum. From the black bear of East Texas to the Egyptian mummy to the cowboy saddle made by hand to the state-of-the-art virtual simulation journey through the Edwards Aquifer, the Witte has offered a look at a still natural world, a window to the world, a glimpse at the tenacity of a pioneering community, and a journey into worlds only high technology can provide.

In 2004, the board of trustees named Marise McDermott President and CEO, and charged her to provide the vision that would make the institution fiscally sound, while meeting the diverse needs of a thriving community and its visitors. The goals of the new Witte Museum of History, Science and Culture are to embrace its venerable history and at the same time show a bold front symbolizing the community's future. Broadway is a powerful historic roadway, from its origins as River Avenue along which the Spanish Colonial acequias ran, to its current status as a main artery from highways, suburbia to the City of San Antonio. McDermott anticipates that within 10 years, Broadway will be revitalized and become part of the urban center. The Witte Museum's campus expansion will help ignite this renaissance of Broadway with a major destination entrance at the headwaters of the San Antonio River and its entrance to historic Brackenridge Park.