A Museum That Serves Davenport

The Ecdysiast Arts Museum not only preserves the past. It also responds to the needs of the community surrounding it now.

Every Thursday morning, we host a food pantry outside our museum at 322 N Brady Street in Downtown Davenport, IA.

No IDs. No judgment. Just take what you need.

Food is available on a first-come, first-served basis while supplies last.

Click here to support our Food Pantry.

The Ecdysiast Arts Museum regularly distributes groceries to people in Davenport and throughout the Quad Cities. Our team bags food for neighbors, accepts community donations, and creates opportunities for visitors to contribute shelf-stable items during events.

Food distribution is not separate from the museum’s mission. It is part of how we understand history, labor, and community care.

The artists whose stories are preserved here often used performance to survive, support their families, and create opportunities when none were offered to them. Honoring that history means responding to the realities people face today, including hunger, economic instability, and limited access to support.

Preserving culture while ignoring the needs of living people would be incomplete.

We keep our bathroomS stocked with FREE contraception, menstruation products, & other personal care/hygeine items for anyone who may need them.

The museum also brings performances, education, and public conversations into a city where residents might otherwise have to travel hundreds of miles to access them. The space hosts museum tours, lectures, live music, poetry, open mics, dance, cultural panels, community events, and conversations about labor, democracy, gender, art, collective bargaining, bodily autonomy, and political power.

Its historic stage gifted by Sue and Chris Kretz, once housed at St. Ambrose University, now gives local and visiting artists a place to perform. Its library offers opportunities to study burlesque, feminism, gender, labor, sex work, performance, and social movements. 

The museum has become a place where working-class, blue-collar, rural, queer, and Midwestern communities can encounter art and ideas from across the country and around the world.

It also gives people whose histories are often dismissed or hidden an opportunity to see themselves represented with dignity.

Photo of Dannie Diesel performing at ecdysiast arts museum by howie do.

Help Us Build a Permanent Home for Burlesque History and Community Care in Davenport

We are raising an initial $150,000 to protect the museum’s archive, compensate the small team keeping the space running, continue food distribution and public programming, and build the administrative foundation needed to make the museum a permanent institution in Davenport. Once we reach that first goal, we will work toward a second goal of $300,000 so the museum can move from immediate stability into long-term growth.

What Your Contribution Supports

• Every contribution helps carry a piece of this work.

• A $25 contribution can help purchase shelf-stable food, preservation materials, or basic museum supplies. 

• A $50 contribution can support public programming and the daily care of the space. 

• A $100 contribution can help fund educational programming, archive documentation, or artist support. 

• A $250 contribution can contribute to professional preservation equipment, building needs, or fair compensation for the people keeping the museum operating.

• Larger contributions can directly support staff stability, food access, archival protection, workforce education, and the museum’s transition into a permanent cultural institution.

No single donor has to carry the entire museum. That is the point of community.

When lots of people contribute what they can, the museum becomes stronger and more sustainable than it could ever be if one person were expected to fund everything.