This exhibition explores controversial themes and displays racially offensive images to stimulate a healthy community conversation about our ongoing struggles with race.

Every day, thrift stores receive items with racial imagery—antique advertising cards, collectible salt-and-pepper shakers, vintage children’s books, and mugs with sports team mascots. This exhibit asks questions:

• “Are these harmless reminders of past attitudes, or do they perpetuate stereotypes about race?”
• “Should thrift stores sell these objects? Or should they be ‘sorted out’ of the resale environment and discarded?”

Sorting Out Race arose out of a desire to divert artifacts with racial content from thrift stores to an exhibit that would generate a healthy community conversation about racial stereotypes, past and present, in order to heighten awareness of our continuing struggles with race.

Kauffman Museum formed the Thrift Store Collection from items found at thrift shops in Kansas between 2010 and 2015.

This traveling exhibition was designed and produced by Kauffman Museum at Bethel College in North Newton, Kansas. The exhibit team: Nicole Eitzen, Jacob Harris, David Kreider, Annette LeZotte, Paloma Olais, Rachel Pannabecker, Chuck Regier. Original exhibit concept by Leia Lawrence.

The Sorting Out Race exhibit is included in the museum admission at no additional cost.