Some of us came over the Bering Strait land bridge more than 10,000 years ago, and others arrived by airplane last year while fleeing oppression. All of us have a story to tell about how we, or our ancestors, came to make America our home.
Those stories are told in a traveling Smithsonian exhibit that opened this week at the Animas Museum. Called “Journey Stories,” it is a multimedia, interactive history of American travel and settlement.
“The American story is unique, shaped by innovation in transportation, the personal will of many desperately desiring freedom and many others denied freedom’s promise,” said Anna Cohn, director of the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service.
“From the Trail of Tears to Depression-era migration, Journey Stories showcases America’s history of travel and transportation and helps visitors understand the connection of our ancestors to geography, events and the development of new modes of transportation,” she said.
In Colorado, the exhibit, which launched in 2009, already has visited Aspen, Hayden, Platteville and Trinidad and will head to Sterling from here.
Durango is one of about 185 communities in 25 states and Guam that will host the exhibit before its retirement in 2015, said Museums on Main Project Director Robbie Davis.
“Colorado Humanities (which supports educational and cultural opportunities throughout the state) approached us looking to get this exhibit across the state and in all four corners,” Animas Museum Director Carolyn Bowra said. “A woman from CH was in town and popped her head into my office to see if we’d be interested. Who says no to the Smithsonian?”
The exhibit includes poetry, music, maps, physical objects and lots of photographs and drawings, including photographs of the Dust Bowl years during the Depression by famed photographer Dorothea Lange. It’s an examination of more than 400 years of Americans on the move.
“Everybody will find a tie-in here,” Bowra said. “A family story, a town where they went to high school, a place they went on vacation. I kept thinking about Peyton Manning yelling ‘Omaha’ in the snaps when I looked at the historical stockyard bill from Omaha.”
The exhibit takes an unflinching look at slavery and forced migrations such as the Trail of Tears, often told in the first-person voices of slaves and Native Americans.
“The Middle Passage is horrifying,” Bowra said about the slavery voyages from Africa to America, “but it’s something we need to know. And I like the section on railroads because of the ties to our local history.”
Making it happen
The Smithsonian, the world’s largest museum and research complex, has been creating traveling exhibits for 60 years. It created Journey Stories in collaboration with the Federation of State Humanities Councils. Davis said it takes about three years and 75 people to take an exhibit from concept to debut.
The exhibit pulls elements from libraries and archives across the country in addition to highlights from the Smithsonian’s own extensive collections.
“We cast a pretty wide net,” Davis said. “The exhibit isn’t only to give people a taste of the Smithsonian’s collection, but to make people feel personally connected to it where they live.”
While it took only took three hours to set up the exhibit, the installation was the result of two years of planning and preparation. The biggest challenge was creating a large enough empty space to house the exhibit in the museum, which, as a former school, doesn’t have a lot of large spaces. It just fits in the space on the main floor.
The Smithsonian has created a number of other traveling exhibits, including “Between Fences,” “Key Ingredients,” “New Harmonies” and “The Way We Worked.” Its newest exhibit, “Hometown Teams: How Sports Shape America” will open next week in New Jersey.
“I’m like a woman who’s just given birth and says never again,” Bowra said when asked if the museum would be interested in hosting another traveling Smithsonian exhibit. “Ask me again after I have time to recover.”
The local connection
The Smithsonian established its traveling exhibits because 20 percent of Americans live in rural areas and about 43 percent of American museums are in small, rural towns.
“Though rural museums demonstrate uncanny enthusiasm for local heritage, they often have fewer opportunities for funding or technical assistance,” the Smithsonian says on its website about the project.
Museums hosting Journey Stories are encouraged to mount their own complementary exhibits, and Colorado Humanities provided support by giving the Animas Museum a $2,000 grant.
Guest curator Susan Jones created an exhibit downstairs in the museum featuring La Plata County stories, with items ranging from Animas City blacksmith Charlie Naeglin’s anvil to a DVD of mule skinner Olga Little’s appearance on Ralph Edwards’ “This is Your Life.”
The grant money was used to make creative display fixtures that raise the quality of the exhibit from what the museum is generally able to do.
“It was Susan’s first exhibit, and I think she knocked it out of the park,” Bowra said.
The Animas Museum also partnered with the Durango Arts Center for Journey Stories, and an accompanying juried art exhibit will run there in the Barbara Conrad Gallery through Feb. 1.
Bowra is hoping to encourage visits from area schools, not only Durango School District 9-R, but around the Four Corners, and all ages, including high school students.
“Our goal is to get folks through the door and to bring this exhibit to the community,” she said. “Even non-museum people can browse and graze their way through, seeing what catches their attention, pushing a button here, touching an item there.”
abutler@durangoherald.com
If you go
The “Journey Stories” exhibit will run until March 18 at the Animas Museum, 3065 West Second Ave. The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and admission is free for members, $4 for adults, $3 for seniors 65 and older and $2 for children ages 7 to 12.
The museum will hold its grand opening celebration at 2 p.m. today, which will feature several prominent people in La Plata County history, including railroad builder Otto Mears; Chipeta, the second wife of Ute Chief Ouray and a leader in her own right; Animas Valley pioneer Mrs. Pinkerton; mule driver Olga Little; blacksmith Charlie Naeglin; and a special guest from the 1776 Dominguez-Escalante Expedition. Admission will be free today.
At 1 p.m. Feb. 22, Katherine Burgess will give a presentation called “Why We Travel: Tourism Through the Ages.” Admission also will be free this day.
A companion Journey Stories art exhibit is on display in the Barbara Conrad Gallery at the Durango Arts Center through Feb. 1. Exhibit hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and admission is free.
To learn more about the exhibit, visit www.museumonmainstreet.org. Information available includes coordinated lesson plans for teachers working with students elementary age through high school.
