Behind the scenes: Exhibit Design (or, how the historic sausage is made)

When you visit the ACHS exhibit gallery, you may spend a half hour enjoying the displays—maybe an hour if you read everything. It looks polished, logical, and arranged nicely for you to understand the information presented. You might skip something you’re not interested in, spend more time on something that catches your eye, or even look something up on your phone to bring more depth to your experience. You chit-chat with the folks at the front desk, maybe leave a donation (thank you!), and head off to the rest of your day. Hopefully, a tidbit sticks in your mind, and it comes up in conversation with someone down the road, and you put in a good word for us (also, thank you!)

The staff at ACHS has one goal when creating exhibits: to make the presentation of information pleasant to consume. Contrary to logical thought, a simple display takes far more staff time than a complicated one packed with textual information and items on display. We want to pull the curtain back on the process and how the current exhibit, “Take Your Place in History,” came to exist.

Let's rewind about two years. The Anoka Chamber of Commerce has a subset of members called “Discover Anoka” that we participate in as a Main Street business. The group purchased billboard space along Highway 169, and we chipped in to have our logo flash to everyone stuck in traffic on a Friday night for several weeks. What else to include besides our logo? Whatever slogan we put on this billboard could be used in our marketing campaign and exhibitions, so it had to be perfect. Inclusive. Thoughtful. Concise. Powerful. Applicable to the wider community. *Insert lots of thinking and maybe some caffeine* SUCCESS.

“Take Your Place in History” is an action phrase that calls us to think about our legacy and how we want to be remembered and that ACHS can help in that journey. What is one thing everyone has that is shared quickly and costs negligible money? A story. Every resident in Anoka County has a story, and ACHS can help those tales remain in family groups, organization files, or our collection at the history center. The tricky part? Effectively telling that story and preserving it for the future. That thought led us to hold a storytelling workshop series via Zoom, author presentations to dissect how they organized and translated family information into a readable product and explore other ways of telling stories that didn’t involve writing.

Jolanda Dranchak works at School District 11, and over lunch one day, she explained how she would choose a word each month to mull over, do some journal writing, and finally use her skills as a weaver of found objects to process her emotions. This new form of storytelling intrigued us, and soon, Jolanda’s 13 weavings representing the death of her husband, COVID-19, and her PTSD from growing up in a Soviet bloc country came roaring back on January 6, 2021, appeared at ACHS. Holding the pieces up to the traditionally white museum wall, Jolanda asked if it could change to blue, as that background was part of the weaving story. (Thanks for supplying the paint and labor!) Next came brainstorming the title, “All That’s Weft: Living a Life Interrupted,” –this admittedly took a few pages of scribble and a drive home to create, but it felt perfect when the words came together. A separate conversation brought up the idea of using a Cricut machine to make the conceptual title and labels physically appear on the wall *insert research on the machine* and upon checking the “yes” box for that, we wondered from whom we could borrow one for a test drive (thanks, Jessica!) *fast forward to staff purchasing vinal, cutting boards, and transfer paper then reading directions and running some tests* After the words adhered to the wall, Jolanda’s artist statement needed to appear on floor stands. We stood back and admired the finished product, took some pictures, and began to create the webpage (find it under “What we do” and “exhibit hall”), postcards for the opening reception (a whole separate planning schedule), and social media announcements.

While ACHS staff worked through this process, we brainstormed how the rest of the exhibit hall could reflect storytelling differently. We knew our National Register area would feature the Linwood Grange next—a story of place—but in researching the building and location, we realized that it remained inextricably tied to the people of Linwood and their desire to found an agricultural community on education and innovation. *More thinking* What if we displayed information about the building and some artifacts from the charter members? *Realization dawning* We could connect the Veteran Voice project--stories from our more recent veterans--by displaying the military uniform of one of the charter members. *Excitement builds as the phone rings, and Kay Bauer offers her Vietnam mess dress uniform and oral history. * What about the fan fiction project the eighth graders did using the James Groat diaries from the collection? That is a different way of telling stories and investigating history and legacy (also available on the ACHS website). We have some Civil War artifacts that would complement that, right? Suddenly, the ideas ran freely, and the hall felt alive with activity. The staff made lists and lists of elements necessary to complete the displays—graphics, printing, research, transcription, cleaning cases, writing labels, and publicity.

Concurrently, the Adopt an Artifact program had brought in many donations and exciting conversations with people. As we listened to people describe their families and hobbies to discover a perfect adoption match, it became clear that the artifact selection process told a story about values and perspectives. The Civil War historian felt drawn to a gun of the era. The government-minded chose the County Commissioner table. The granddaughter wanted to support their family artifact. Someone with a sense of humor wanted to adopt the oldest pickle for fun. The exhibit hall now became a place for adopters to explain why they felt drawn to this object and its story—what connection they felt.

*Head scratch* We decided to leave the desk representing Charles Horn and the first class of Federal Cartridge employees as the story of a corporation surviving into its second century. What about those who didn’t? *Lightbulb flash* A recent donation of labels from the St. Francis Canning Company spurred more research and a dive into our archives to find photos. Perfect. A little mylar around the artifacts and some staples in the wall, print those display panels, buy some more Command Strips, and poof. It is a story that could quickly disappear from memory if it wasn’t preserved in the ACHS collection.

During this past year (seriously, all of this is happening simultaneously), we worked to digitize the Olson Family Collection using a grant from the Legacy Funds. Being from the Ham Lake area, the collection not only filled a geographic void in our collection but also filled the void of women’s stories through the generations. It’s a story of the location, the ever-changing landscape of ground the family owned, of changing technology and personal artifacts, of homosexuality before it was legal, and the transferability of this story to provide information on other rural Anoka County families. We selected one image of men by a sod house to print on a large fabric wrap as a background for the other text panels and display case. The book On the Go All the Time: The Unusually Usual Lives of Two Midwestern Women by Daryl Richard Lawrence, lay on the nearby table as a testament to how to corral “too much” family information into a readable source for the public.

One other big piece of the exhibit puzzle stood in our way before we could open officially in July at Anoka’s Riverfest—what we call the “splash wall” had to be designed, printed, and, most importantly, arranged on the wall. We spent some time sitting on the floor sketching ideas using photos, maps, and the billboard design (screaming into the void occasionally). We finally brought a draft layout to our printer (thanks, Church Offset Printing!) and waited to see if what we saw in our mind's eye would work.

It did. After a day of work, the elements clung to the wall with only a few air bubbles that Sara quickly popped with a pin and smoothed down. We popped a slideshow of images into the TV monitors Don had shifted to the right place and clinked cookies to celebrate a job well done.

We welcome everyone to the History Center for research, socializing, volunteering, and, of course, to see the exhibit. We hope our skills have created a professional-looking space for you to enjoy! Now for the next one…