Seven regions (Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Oceania, Southeast Asia, and Southwest Asia) are represented in her collection to bring history and cultural diversity to our community through artifacts, musical instruments, art, clothing, jewelry, and household items, to name a few.

Our first sneak preview for members and donors contained over 150 items from the following 39 countries: Jordan, China, Pakistan, Chile, South Africa, Senegal, Spain, Russia, Algeria, Indonesia, South Korea, Switzerland, USSR, Thailand, Myanmar (Burma), Japan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Oman, Sri Lanka, Kenya, India, The Congo, Afghanistan, Australia, Peru, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Mexico, Venezuela, Czech Republic, Poland, Nicaragua, North America, Panama, Hungary, Romania, and a curated display featuring textiles and clothing from Guatemala. These items represented less than 1.5% of the full collection.

The roots of WINDOW TO THE WORLD began back in the 1970’s in Jefferson County, Colorado. Sue Koenig, the museum’s founder, began teaching with Jefferson County Schools (Jeffco) in 1964, fresh out of college. Sue’s foreign travel began in 1972 and never stopped once she saw the impact her travel journeys had on her students.

She worked extra jobs to save enough money for a ticket to go somewhere every summer. Her international network was quite large, and she almost always found someone to stay with wherever she went. She not only saved hotel costs, but she learned some of the language, saw how people lived, learned customs, and was able to shop with a native. Each summer she would come home with music, costumes, artifacts, household utensils, and language lessons.

In 1984 she was able to talk herself into a job with Saudi Aramco Schools in Saudi Arabia. She was the only teacher hired at the time, and a single woman at that. She chose to work in Saudi as that was the only way she could see that country. Tourists were not allowed in those days. Once there, Sue quickly learned that single women not only couldn’t drive but were not allowed to travel without a male family member. So, she had to come up with another way to see the country.

She was told that if she had a group of twenty or so and there were married men with their wives in the group, the men could “be responsible” for the single women. So, she started organizing and leading tours throughout Saudi Arabia, the Middle East, and eventually to such destinations as Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Korea. And because Sue did all of the work, she received that trip free of charge. That meant she had money for shopping for artifacts for her classroom.

After nearly thirty years of collecting items from the over 100 countries she visited, she started to think about what she would do with everything when she retired from teaching. Thus, the idea of Window to the World, an international, interactive museum was born. The museum was in operation for 12 years and in storage for 17 years when she was unable to secure another building to house the collection. The collection now finds its new beginning at the International Museum of Art.