As the Trump administration continues its attempts to erase and rewrite history — on Tuesday, President Trump said he had “instructed my attorneys to go through the [Smithsonian] Museums” to ensure the Smithsonian is focused on “Success” and “Brightness” instead of “how bad Slavery was” — Iowans will rally on Saturday to demand the state protect their history.
On June 17, the State Historical Society of Iowa (SHSI), a division of the Iowa Department of Administrative Services (IDAS), announced it would be permanently closing its Iowa City research facility and archives, housed in the Centennial Building since 1956.
“The decision was not made lightly,” Valerie Van Kooten, SHSI administrator, said in a news release announcing the plan. “We take seriously the stewardship of Iowa’s history through its collection, artifacts, and programs, and we are committed to providing the highest level of care for these items as well as the best possible experience for our patrons and the people of Iowa.”
According to the news release, “ongoing financial considerations” and a desire to increase efficiency by combining materials from the Iowa City facility with Des Moines’ SHSI Building in Des Moines prompted the decision.
In early July, the Centennial Building cut back the hours it is open to researchers and the public. The research facility is scheduled to close its doors for good on June 30, 2026.
The announcement took historians, researchers and others interested in state and local history by surprise. There had been no attempt to solicit public input about the decision, or any advance warning that such a major change was under consideration.
“You’re not being transparent,” Mary Bennett, a former special collections coordinator who worked at the Iowa City facility for 49 years before retiring in 2023, said during public comments at the SHSI Board of Trustees meeting in late June. “Gov. Reynolds and your office made this decision unilaterally, relying on a very small handful of people, and I’m sorry, but this is erasing our history.”
The board had not been asked to approve the decision to close the Iowa City facility, and did not have the plan presented to them before it was announced. During the late June meeting, then-director of the IDAS Adam Steen told the trustees the department considered involving them in the decision to be unnecessary. (Steen resigned his position on Tuesday, and launched a campaign for governor. “I’m a Jesus guy. I’m a Make America Great Again guy,” Steen said at his campaign kickoff, before boasting about refusing to allow groups with beliefs he found objectionable to hold events at the Iowa Capitol.)
Van Kooten said SHSI was given only a few weeks to try to come up with a solution to a shortfall in its FY 2027 budget, which takes effect July 1, 2026. Van Kooten also said the Centennial Building was in need of an estimated $760,000 in repairs and upgrades.
Speaking to Iowa Public Radio on Tuesday, State Archivist Anthony Jahn defended the decision to shutter the Iowa City research center. He said the SHSI was facing a deficit of $800,000 because of funding cuts by the state and federal governments and other funders, although a bill signed by Gov. Reynolds in early June provides $5 million to expand storage at the SHSI facility in Des Moines, and assist in streamlining access to those archives. According to Jain, the archival material will eventually become more accessible than ever before.
“Let’s provide as much public access as we can to the materials, but then also preserve those materials in a single location, so the public can come in and they can have a one-stop shop where they can find everything that they need,” he told IPR’s Charity Nebbe.
Jain said plans for the future call for more digitization of SHSI material, so they will be available online, but specifics remain to be determined.
The Centennial Building in Iowa City houses 34,700 cubic feet of archival materials, including thousands of books, more than a century worth of newspapers and county records, as well as manuscripts, letters, photos and maps donated to the SHSI and a repository of oral histories. Bennett estimates the Des Moines facility will only be able to accommodate 40 percent of that material, and Jahn told Nebbe that other accommodations for some of the collection will have to be worked out.
Even if there was sufficient space for all the Iowa City material in the Des Moines archives, moving it would still pose a problem. As UI archivist emeritus David McCartney explained in a letter to Little Village opposing the closure of the Centennial Building, archival materials require special treatment when moved and stored to prevent any damage.
Thousands of items in the Centennial Building “will be at risk of damage if not handled properly,” McCartney wrote. “It is not known what provision, if any, has been made to adequately prepare these materials for transfer.”
“Access to these holdings will be compromised during what promises to be a long and arduous transfer process. One would hope that there will be at minimum a paper/digital trail documenting these transfers so that researchers will be redirected to their new destinations. So far, however, no assurance of such accountability has been forthcoming by those who made this decision.”
The difficulty in transferring materials may be exacerbated by SHSI’s small staff size, and plans to further reduce staff as the society’s budget decreases.
The Save Iowa History Coalition 2025, which came together to oppose the facility closure, is concerned that archival materials will be less accessible to the public if the decision to eliminate the Iowa City facility isn’t reversed. Coalition members also worry that important material currently accessible in Iowa City will be relegated to storage, where it might decay. The coalition has launched an online petition drive to ask the state to reverse its decision. As of Wednesday afternoon, the petition has almost 5,000 signatures.
Even if the move of materials to Des Moines proceeded with no problems whatsoever, the closure of the Centennial Building will have a deleterious impact on UI, as historian Eric Zimmer explained to the Gazette.
“If you’re going to have a flagship state school with the history department, with faculty, and you are trying to recruit people from around the country and the world to do work there, and in the name of streamlining you create the two-hour barrier between Iowa City and Des Moines for people to be able to go through that research, it creates all kinds of challenges,” he said.
Zimmer earned his graduate degrees at the University of Iowa. His award-winning book, Red Earth Nation: A History of the Meskwaki Settlement, grew out of his UI Master’s thesis, which relied on research he conducted in the Centennial Building.
On Saturday, the “Save Iowa History” rally, organized by the coalition and the Iowa Labor History Society, will be held in meeting rooms A, B and C of the Iowa City Public Library. The two-hour event begins at 1 p.m. on Saturday. It is free and open to the public, and will feature live music and a series of speakers. Rally-goers will also be invited to march along the sidewalks to the nearby Centennial Building (402 Iowa Ave) to show their support for the research facility.
