An unseemly battle
Conner Prairie is a 40 year old living history museum in Fishers, Indiana (just outside of Indianapolis). It is run by Earlham College (my alma mater), a small Quaker school in Richmond, Indiana.
Mr. Eli Lilly, (heir of the family responsible for the drug company) in 1963 gave Earlham the entire land and complex of buildings and equipment that made up the Conner farm, with the provision that approximately 58 acres, the Conner homestead, would be preserved in perpetuity as a historical monument, but with the remaining 1,370 acres transferred “free of any restrictions so that the property may be held or sold at the discretion of the Earlham governing board and the proceeds used to assist in the maintenance of its educational establishments.” The Museum was supported by subsequent gifts from Mr. Lilly. Sometimes the gifts we generally to Earlham, and sometime restricted to the Museum. Earlham was left to determine how to preserve and administer the home, which over time has developed into a rather huge cultural-educational tourist-attraction.
The ultimate goal was to present a representation of an Indiana village of the mid-1830s. Through the ongoing gifts, Earlham’s endowment has grown with the popularity of the Museum. As the Museum grew, Earlham began to give its management more control over its functions, and eventually, the Museum has come to be run by a separate president and 31 member board.
The problems (as I see it) started when the Museum began to seek more autonomy, and specifically, a greater share of income from the Lilly gifts to Earlham. Then, last June, Earlham fired the president and 27 of the board members. This is when the dispute went public.
The fired management has sued the college and basically charged Earlham with improperly using money that Mr. Lilly intended to go to Conner Prairie for its educational purposes. Earlham has a very different interpretation of these gifts and the intended role Earlham was to have in overseeing Conner Prairie.
Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter got involved and tried to help the parties broker a deal. And today, the Palladium-Item reports that Carter has now taken legal action to force Earlham to turn over records relating to the management and funds involved in the dispute.
Landrum Bolling, President of Earlham when the gift was made, good friend of Mr. Lilly, and former director of the Lilly Endowment (the large foundation created by the Lilly family for charitable purposes), has posted his reflections of the true intent of Mr. Lilly in creating the museum.
Mr. Carter and the fired management team are all members of Indiana’s political elite, based in Indianapolis. Earlham has come under lots of bad press (Indiana’s paper of record, the Indianapolis Star, is located in the power center), and has taken some blows to its image. The true story line here is yet to be established, but I cannot help feeling that a small school of the edge of Indiana might be getting shoved around by some powerful folks in the capitol.
