Sharing the stories of America
For a quarter of a century, the Museum on Main Street [MoMS] program has brought the Smithsonian to small-town audiences and rural communities with exhibitions that focus on storytelling and celebration of each community’s heritage. Since 1994, MoMs exhibitions—conceived and created by the Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition Service—have visited more than 1,600 communities (in all 50 states and Guam) with an average population of 8,000.
Museum on Main Street celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2019. Thomaston, Georgia was one of the towns that helped ring in the anniversary with its opening of Crossroads: Change in Rural America. Photo by Rick Brozek.
Courtesy of Georgia Humanities.
The exhibition, Key Ingredients: America by Food, wins the prize for biggest trouper, touring 230 venues over the course of about 12 years.
This year, MoMS unveils its newest exhibition, Voices and Votes: Democracy in America, to coincide with the presidential election year.
MoMS, which Robbie Davis, project director at SITES, likens to “a three-legged stool,” is a cluster of partnerships among the Smithsonian, state humanities councils and local arts, history and cultural organizations.
MoMS exhibitions inspire dialogue, engagement, and more than a little fun. Teens in Dade City, Florida, mull over trivia questions at Hometown Teams in 2018.
Courtesy Florida Humanities Council and Chris Zuppa Pictures
“We partner up with a statewide organization,” such as the Idaho Humanities Council, he explains. “Our state partner then recruits [multiple local] venues”–such as the Latah County Historical Society in Moscow, Idaho, to name just one–where a traveling exhibition will be displayed, typically for four to eight weeks at a time before moving on to the next venue. Most state tours travel to six communities.
Typically, five copies of a given exhibition are circulating at any given time through the life of a tour.
The stories and traditions of Guam’s Chamorro community were an integral part of “New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music” when it appeared at Gef Pago Cultural Center in Inarajan, Guam in 2007.
Courtesy of Humanities Guahan
A MoMS staffer is on site for the initial exhibition setup, guidance and support, Davis says. “They receive a truckload of crates, big black boxes. I’ve seen them being pushed in the snow in the Midwest as well as coming up an island road with goats watching.” And assembling the contents of the crates is very much a community effort. At the first installation, representatives from each venue where the exhibit will tour within a given state takes part in order to learn how to assemble the exhibit. SITES strives to make the process as intuitive as possible, though “We do a lot of engineering to make sure all that is easy to put together.”
“Stories: YES,” a youth education program operated by MoMS, enables students in rural communities to engage in local history projects. In Lanesboro, Minnesota, a student interviews a resident for a video project.
Museum on Main Street photo.
In consultation with both officials at the state humanities councils and their own citizens, each venue builds around a given exhibition the programming they best believe will enhance community engagement and maximize attendance. Produce for Victory: Posters on the American Home Front 1941-1945, for example, which toured for 12 years and visited 140 different communities, used posters issued by government agencies and private businesses to foster citizens’ efforts to support the war effort during World War II. To complement it, venues invited local WWII veterans – soldiers and homegrown, real-life “Rosie the Riveters” alike – to screenings, receptions and other events attached to the exhibition. “We let them run with it however they saw fit,” Davis says.
Am authentic Rosie the Riveter at the Museum on Main Street Exhibition, “Produce for Victory” in Meridian, Mississippi.
Over the years, everyone from nearby high-school marching bands to local politicians to sheriffs has pitched in to make MoMS exhibitions all they can be, Davis adds.
Venues say their communities benefit in myriad ways when MoMS comes to town.
“There is a lot of cachet” to offering a Smithsonian-branded exhibit, says Dulce Kersting-Lark, Director of the Latah County Historical Society, which hosted Crossroads at the town’s chamber of commerce building and Water/Ways at City Hall.
The Museum on Main Street exhibition “Water/Ways” at the Niobrara National Scenic River in Valentine, Nebraska, 2018.
Courtesy Niobrara National Scenic River, National Park Service
These exhibitions “have created a hunger in our community” for more exhibitions, she says, noting that she appreciates the programming workshops that precede the actual installation. Among other things, the team at the Historical Society developed a scavenger hunt for schoolchildren to enhance their understanding of both exhibits, as well as other public programs.
Project-managing the exhibitions and interacting with Smithsonian staff has proved invaluable in her career, Lark adds, singling out SITES’ Carol Harsh and Terri Cobb: “they have been lovely to work with.”
Moscow, Idaho rolled out the red carpet for MoMS 25th anniversary. The Latah County Historical Society and Moscow Chamber of Commerce partnered to host “Crossroads: Change in Rural America” in 2019. Photo courtesy of Museum on Main Street
Greg Hatcher, executive director of the Mississippi Industrial Heritage Museum in Meridian, says that citizens are always ready to volunteer as docents in the exhibitions made possible by a 17-year-old partnership with SITES.
“We never have a problem attracting people who want to help,” he says. Museum staff have been featured on talk shows about the exhibitions, donors contribute funds to advertise them and residents search their own attics and basements for items that relate to them, such as a 1940 radio with the tags still on it contributed by one volunteer to enhance a vintage kitchen display accompanying Produce for Victory. “As I reached out to one person about the exhibition, they would tell me about another person who wanted to help,” Hatcher says.
The Union County Carnegie Library in Union, South Carolina kicked off the state’s 2018 tour of “Crossroads: Change in Rural America.”
Photo courtesy of Museum on Main Street
Another unexpected benefit of hosting a MoMS exhibition: local business owners and others secure the exhibition space at night for parties, annual meetings and other gatherings, exposing MoMS exhibitions to additional swaths of people hundreds, if not thousands, of miles from Washington, D.C.
To hear more stories from MoMS, listen to the podcast Museums in Strange Places or visit the Museum on Main Street website.
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Posted: 13 January 2020
Another really fine piece by Amy Rogers Nazarov. As usual, she presents the material succinctly while making use of illuminating quotes from individuals.