Willa Cather Foundation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 Red Cloud Opera House, now the foundation's headquarters, in Red Cloud, Nebraska | |
 | |
| Founded | 1955 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Local volunteers, under direction of Mildred R. Bennett |
| Type | Non-profit |
| Location | |
| Coordinates | 40°05′21″N 98°31′10″W / 40.08912°N 98.51948°W |
| Website | willacather |
The Willa Cather Foundation is an American not-for-profit organization, headquartered in Red Cloud, Nebraska, dedicated to preserving the archives and settings associated with Willa Cather (1873–1947), a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and promoting the appreciation of her work.[1] Established in 1955, the Foundation is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization that promotes Willa Cather's legacy through education, preservation, and the arts. Programs and services include regular guided historic site tours, conservation of the 612 acre Willa Cather Memorial Prairie, and organization of year-round cultural programs and exhibits at the restored Red Cloud Opera House.
In 2017, the Willa Cather Foundation opened the National Willa Cather Center—an archive, museum, and study center in downtown Red Cloud which houses the Red Cloud Opera House, art gallery, bookstore, a permanent exhibit on the life and works of Willa Cather, "American Bittersweet," and an expansive, climate-controlled Special Collections & Archives. The Foundation houses growing archival and museum collections and preserves ten properties that make up the largest collection of nationally designated historic sites related to an American author.
The organization was founded in 1955[2] in Red Cloud, the small town that appears frequently in Willa Cather's novels and stories under a variety of names.[3]
Cather, born in Virginia in 1873, moved with her family to rural Webster County, Nebraska, in 1883; in late 1884 the family resettled in the county seat of Red Cloud, where Cather lived until beginning her college studies at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln in 1890.[4]
Established as the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial,[5] the foundation was organized by a group of local volunteers under the direction of Mildred R. Bennett, a South Dakota native who had originally come to Webster County in 1932 as a schoolteacher and eventually became an important early figure in Cather studies.[6] Bennett's The World of Willa Cather, published in 1951, was the first full-length biography to be published following Cather's death in 1947, and remains a useful resource for studying Cather's Nebraska milieu.[7]
