Johanna Wickman, President of Wickman Historical Consultants, has spent the past 14 years managing and working in museums. While a museum director in the Palm Springs area, Ms. Wickman increased her museum’s attendance from approximately 650 guests for the month of January 2011, to over 2,900 visitors for the month of February 2011. She researched, planned and designed numerous exhibits from the ground up–many of which were of topics not included in the museum’s collection. She organized the first Civil War re-enactment in the Coachella Valley from the ground up recruiting sponsors and working closely with city, county, police and fire officials with over 3,000 guests in attendance.
She was a founding board member of the Desert Cities Museum Association, Coachella Valley Emergency Preparedness Network for museums, and a featured panelist at the 2011 California Association of Museums conference.
Since founding Wickman Historical Consultants, Ms. Wickman has presented at the Wyoming State Historical Society Annual Meeting, University of Wyoming, Wyoming Geological Association, and was a panelist on “Pop Culture in the Classroom and Museums” at Denver Comic Con.
She edited and wrote an updated version of the history of Casper College for the Casper College Foundation, Spirit of the Thunderbird: 75th Anniversary Edition published in 2020. Her master’s thesis was published as Lost Forts of Casper in 2016 by The History Press. She recently completed a biography of Kansas Senator Preston B. Plumb called “The Forgotten Senator” released in March 2023.
In 2021, she was interviewed as an expert on the 11th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry for the award-winning “Battle of Red Buttes” documentary currently on view at the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center in Casper, Wyoming.
In 2023, she worked with the Fort Caspar Museum to design and install the “Soldiers of the Republic: Stories of the 11th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry” exhibit, organized a reunion of descendants of the 11th Kansas, and put on a production of the lost 1890 play “The Senator.” The plot of the play is fictional, but the main character of Senator Hannibal Rivers was based on Kansas Senator Preston B. Plumb. The play was a runaway Broadway hit in 1890, toured the country and was later made into a (now lost) silent film in 1915. The script was discovered by Wickman while conducting research for her biography on Plumb. Also in 2023, Wickman was glad to see nine headstones installed in the memorial cemetery of the Fort Caspar Museum honoring nine men of the 11th Kansas who lost their lives while in service at the site in 1865. She spent two weeks in Kansas giving programs on Preston B. Plumb and the 11th Kansas in Emporia, Onaga, and Lawrence, and meeting with various museums and historic sites around the state.
She holds four college degrees in Foreign Language (German), Museum & Gallery Studies, Humanities & Fine Arts, and a master’s degree in History. She currently resides in Casper, Wyoming.
Wickman Historical Consultants 