Editor’s note: following is an opinion submitted by Adam Drake, a member of the Representative Town Meeting from District 3.

A few days ago, my family visited the Westport Museum for History and Culture to see The Real Revolution, the museum’s exhibit honoring the 250th anniversary of the founding of the nation. Like most parents, I went in hoping my kids would learn something about our beloved town, behave themselves, and not knock over anything that looked expensive, historic, or both.

What we found was much more than a local history exhibit. We found a museum doing exactly what a museum in 2026 should be doing.

It was not simply retelling the familiar version of the American Revolution, the one with a few famous names, a few powdered wigs, a few battles, and a tidy march toward liberty. (Essentially, a Cliff’s Notes version of Hamilton) Instead, it asked a deeper and more honest question, whose revolution was it?

The brilliant exhibit focuses on people whose stories are often left out of the narrative, including a local family with sons on opposing sides of the conflict, enslaved men risking their lives for freedom, and a woman posing as a man in the fight for liberty. My children especially enjoyed the interactive area for kids.

The whole experience made something very clear to me, not only as a parent, but also as a member of Westport’s Representative Town Meeting. The Westport Museum for History and Culture is not just a nice local nonprofit. Rather, it’s part of Westport’s public infrastructure of memory, education, identity, and belonging. And it’s time for the Town of Westport to consider supporting it that way.

Today, the Museum is a private nonprofit. Much to my surprise, it’s not owned by the Town of Westport nor does it receive town funding. It relies on members, donors, grants, private funders, events, rentals, and the generosity of people who believe that a town should know its long and storied past. But private generosity should not be the only thing standing between Westport and the preservation of Westport’s own story.

We already understand this model in other parts of town life. Westport supports and partners with other institutions that help make the town what we know and love. 

Earthplace teaches environmental stewardship and protects open space. Wakeman Town Farm connects families to food, farming, sustainability, and community. The Levitt Pavilion turns a summer night into a townwide gathering. And, the Westport Library, one of the clearest examples of how a civic institution can be both publicly supported and community powered, is a place for learning, conversation, culture, children, families, writers, students, seniors, and anyone who simply needs a good book or a quiet table.

I believe the Westport Museum does something just as essential.

It protects our shared memory.

Westport should not be a town that forgets its history. A town that remembers its past with honesty and clarity becomes stronger, more thoughtful, and more capable of seeing all of its residents as part of the story.

That is especially important in a town like Westport, where many of us did not grow up here. Westport has a large population of transplants, families who arrived from New York City, other parts of Connecticut, other states, and other countries. Some came for the schools. Some came for the beach. Some came for the arts, the community, the commute, the trees, the restaurants, the schools again, and yes, probably also because someone told them the Merritt Parkway traffic wasn’t “that bad.”

But when you move to a town without deep family roots, you do not automatically inherit its stories. You may know the fastest way to get to Compo, the exact minute traffic gets impossible down Rte. 33 (it’s 4:27pm), and which of the 30 youth sports emails you forgot to answer, but you may not know the longer arc of the place you now call home. You may not know who lived here before, what was built, what was lost, who was excluded, who fought to be included, and how the town became what it is.

That is where a museum becomes more than a museum. It becomes a doorway to our shared history.

The Westport Museum gives newer residents a way to belong more deeply, by inviting them to learn what “here” really means. It helps transform Westport from a beautiful place to live into a community with memory, context, responsibility, and roots.

The museum’s mission is exactly the kind of mission a town should want to stand behind, especially a town like Westport, which takes pride in education, civic engagement, the arts, inclusion, and public service. It is not merely storing old objects behind glass. In fact, the museum maintains archives dating back to the 1690s, along with art, objects, textiles, and costume collections. It runs programs, walking tours, podcasts, community events, exhibits, and educational experiences. It has explored African American history in Westport, launched LGBTQ+ oral history work, partnered with public historians, and created programming that asks us to take a wider lens at who built the town.

Other towns and institutions offer useful comparisons. The Fairfield Museum and History Center describes itself as relying on a combination of public and private funding. Its financial statements also show the value of municipal partnership in another form, a long-term land lease with the Town of Fairfield at $1 per year, recorded as a donated lease. Westport should look at examples like this and ask what kind of support makes sense here, for our town, our residents, and our history.

This does not mean the town should write an unlimited check. It does not mean replacing philanthropy with taxpayer funding. It does not mean removing accountability. It means creating a modest, transparent, renewable public-private partnership that recognizes the museum’s civic value.

There should also be clear reporting. The museum could provide an annual public update to the RTM and Board of Finance, showing attendance, school engagement, grants received, private dollars raised, major exhibitions, preservation needs, and community impact. If taxpayers are helping support the work, taxpayers should be able to see the work.

Because the real question is not whether Westport can afford to help fund its museum. The question is whether Westport can afford not to.

We are entering a period when local history will matter more, not less. The 250th anniversary of the United States is already prompting communities across the country to revisit the founding era. But the best museums are not simply treating this anniversary as a celebration. They are treating it as an opportunity to ask better questions. Who was included? Who was excluded? Who fought? Who sacrificed? Who benefited? Who waited generations for promises to become real?

That is what The Real Revolution does so well. It teaches children, and frankly adults, that history is not just what happened. It is what we choose to remember, what we choose to examine, and what we choose to pass on.

All of the best things about Westport rest on a foundation of stories. The stories of the people who lived here before us. The Indigenous people whose presence predates the town. The farmers, merchants, artists, workers, veterans, immigrants, enslaved and free Black residents, women, children, families, dissenters, builders, and neighbors who made Westport more complicated, and far more interesting, than any postcard version can capture.

So yes, if you can, please donate. Become a member. Visit the exhibits. Bring your children. Bring your parents. Bring that one friend who spends 45 minutes reading a single informational plaque. But the Town of Westport should also step forward and recognize the Westport Museum for History and Culture as a civic asset worthy of public support.

We subsidize the future when we fund schools. We subsidize stewardship when we fund nature and sustainability. We subsidize community when we support shared cultural spaces. We subsidize knowledge when we support the library.

We should also help subsidize memory.

Because if Westport’s history belongs to all of us, then all of us should help preserve it.

Adam Drake
RTM Member
District 3