Everidge, who previously served as the Witte’s deputy director, grew up in San Antonio and credits her childhood visits to the museum for a lifelong love of history. Credit: Courtesy Photo / Witte Museum

The Witte Museum’s new CEO, Michelle Cuellar Everidge, comes on as the institution prepares to celebrate its 100th birthday in 2026.

Everidge, who’s been with the Witte for the past 15 years, stepped into the role Feb. 1, succeeding Dirk Elmendorf. Elmendorf served as transitional leader following the departure of Marise McDermott, who stepped aside at the end of 2023 after 20 years in the museum’s top position.

Everidge, who previously served as the Witte’s deputy director, grew up in San Antonio and credits her childhood visits to the museum for a lifelong love of history.

After starting at the Witte as a grant writer, she moved on to positions in fundraising, finance, curation, collections and more. She spearheaded projects including the acclaimed “Black Cowboys: An American Story” exhibition and the museum’s 2024 Conference on Texas, which examined the history of slavery in the Lone Star State.

We caught up with Everidge to talk about the museum’s centennial celebration, the changes she’d like to bring as CEO and an endowment she plans to spearhead to keep the institution funded well into the future.

Under your leadership, the Witte will be launching a major endowment initiative that will shape its future for generations to come. What will that entail?

Well, we are gearing up for that at this point. So, we’re turning a hundred in 2026, and as a part of that, we’ll have a full year of celebrations, including a big birthday bash. We’ll have exhibitions and programming and an endowment campaign that will launch in 2026. So, we are sort of assembling the building blocks for it now, but we’re very excited to be able to have that kind of foundational support for the museum.

Has there ever been an endowment to support the Witte before?

We currently have one, but it’s small. And so as a part of our plans for a long, sustainable future, that’s something that we’ve always wanted to build. And we’ve built this beautiful new Witte Museum, so now it’s time to start that process.

How much larger would the new endowment be than the one that supports the museum right now?

Well, I think I should probably save some of this endowment conversation for a later date, because we really are in the quiet phase right now as we are sort of gearing up for it. … We will probably be able to communicate more to you about what that’s going to look like within the next year, but it’s not really shaped up at this point.

Could you talk a little bit about the exhibitions and content that people are going to see during the centennial year?

Absolutely. We’re planning for that centennial year now. We only turn 100 once, so we’ve got a lot of work to do to make sure that we are celebrating in a way that really honors the museum and that 100 years of history here in San Antonio.

We are going to be working with the community this year to help develop some of those exhibitions. And many of them will feature our collection and tell the history of the Witte Museum. Some will feature new discoveries and the scientific progress that we’re making, especially in the fields of paleontology and geology.

And then we will have a big exhibition in the Gunn Gallery that will be focused on food and culture here in San Antonio and throughout Texas. That will be immersive. It will have interactive activities and it also will include elements from the Witte’s collection, which is really strong in the everyday artifacts that were used by Texans for many generations.

You grew up going to the Witte and enjoying it as a child. What perspective does that bring to your leadership at the museum?

I grew up here in San Antonio and came to the Witte many times. … It helped me to fall in love with museums as spaces for discovery and spaces to explore. And that’s really what I love most about the Witte now.

I think the Witte at its best is full of visitors and children, and it’s a loud museum, and it’s a place where you can really get hands-on and experience — things that you may not have other opportunities to experience. You can see artifacts and primary-source evidence of life millions of years ago that you wouldn’t have another opportunity to see. So, that sort of magic of museums has always stuck with me since my childhood coming to the Witte.

And that’s something that I — in my tenure as a leader of the museum — will strive to continue for the children … that magic of discovery that really stays with you.

Really, that’s what keeps children and visitors of all ages interested in learning more. So, it’s a way of transforming their thinking about the things that they’re interested in, the things that they really want to keep pursuing. It’s these inspiring moments that you can have here at the museum, at the Witte.

Yeah, it sounds like you’re saying that you’d like to see the Witte get even louder and even more hands-on.

That’s right. We love when the museum is alive with people. And I think that’s definitely something we’d like to pursue more in the future, having the museum filled with children and filled with people.

As you come into this leadership role, are there areas you think the museum could improve?

Well, I would hope that people have felt engaged with the museum, but I think we have some growing to do to make sure that everybody really feels welcome and that they feel represented in the galleries.

So, one of the things that we’ll be working on through this year in preparation for 2026 is thinking about how we can get that feedback from our community. People who visit all the time and are members and the people that are here, we know how to reach. But there’s a whole other part of San Antonio that doesn’t come to the museum. And so we’d love to find ways to reach out to them, see how we can serve them as part of our community and make sure that everybody feels welcome to be here.

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This article appears in Feb 5-18, 2025.

Sanford Nowlin is editor-in-chief of the San Antonio Current. He holds degrees from Trinity University and the University of Texas at San Antonio, and his work has been featured in Salon, Alternet, Creative...