Creating My First Museum Exhibit

In April I was asked to create a pop-up exhibit highlighting the Voices of Ewing project I have been working on. Nearly five decades ago members of the Ewing Township Historic Preservation Society began interviewing people. The technique has not been consistent, but it has been something. Over the decades the storage of the interviews changed as technology advanced. Most of the "advanced" technology of the day, including cassette tape and video tape recordings, are fairly useless today and should be brought up to date, as well as have a printed transcript because paper transcends technology. Though paper can be fragile, stored properly it is easier to read.

The task was to look over old interviews and make a poster. I chose the format: a picture (when available), their name, date of the interview, a brief description of their life, and a quote that reflects some Ewing history. 

Recognizing people don't work at my pace (mostly because we are all volunteers with lives), I suggested holding off and doing this properly for the October event. My request was denied.

As the deadline neared (and life got busier with graduation), the task became more structured. As anyone reading this has worked on a group project, I'll spare you the frustration of being someone who sees a deadline and bumps it up a couple of weeks to be able to gracefully handle the inevitable curveballs working with people who thrive on finishing the project at the last minute. After repeatedly being told I could hand it off when I was too busy to work on it, I did just that.

Deep breaths.

Let the criticisms wash over me.

Did you see the typos? I made all the changes I was given, did you proofread in a timely fashion? 

I don't like the color scheme. Black background would work better than grey. Hmm, I remember saying the same thing when I was told grey would be better.

The supplies I needed to hang the exhibit properly didn't arrive in time. Hmm...that's why I suggested ordering them earlier.

More deep breaths.

The end result for June turned out to be a temporary exhibit. It was hung crookedly 15 minutes before people arrived using painters' tape which was good for preserving the new paint job, but not necessarily strong enough for the boards. Those board will be edited and reprinted. As more interview are collected, more boards will be created so the room will fill.

I'll admit, they did their job, which was to highlight how we are using the interviews to highlight Ewing's history. We had a board that said: Your Story Here and a sign up sheet for more interviews. A priority was made to order a camcorder to be used solely for this project. In the past we used digital recorders, our phones, a borrowed camcorder, or simply pen and paper. Having future recordings in one place will be a great step forward. Of course we should all recognize within five years this great technology will be considered outdated, but for now if we can record more stories, transcribe them (using transcription software), and keep them in one place it will be a great step forward.