Exhibits for Schools and Libraries

After 18 months of touring, the Sac and Fox Heritage Exhibit has been refurbished and readied for more touring to small venues. It is 10 feet wide and 8 feet tall, and it has its own built-in lighting. It is ideal for libraries or small museums. Contact me, Michael Bouman, about booking it at your museum, school, or public library in 2008.

A touring exhibit on Osage Heritage is also in production for the same venues.

Sac and Fox Exhibit Goes to D.C.

The touring exhibit on Sac and Fox heritage is on display at Van Meter State Park through the end of November. Then it comes back for refurbishment and returns in January for more touring. It easily fits into small spaces in libraries or local museums, and it has its own lighting. Space required is ten linear feet. Set-up and take-down is a snap. Contact Michael Bouman for booking information in 2008. We have one new copy for touring in Missouri starting in January. We will have two copies available after March, when copy 2 returns from a three month engagement at the National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian Institution. Congratulations to Sac and Fox Historic Preservation Officer, Sandra Massey, to Greg Olson (Missouri State Archives), who designed the exhibit, and to Dr. Fred Fausz at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, who helped with the research.

Sac and Fox Heritage Exhibit at Van Meter State Park

Van Meter State Park is one of Missouri's showcase places to interpret Native American heritage. From now through the end of November, the touring exhibit on Sac and Fox heritage will be on display there.

Of special interest is a public program at 10 a.m. on Sept. 22. Representatives from the Sac and Fox Nation of Missouri in Kansas and Nebraska and the Sac and Fox Nation of Oklahoma will be on hand to answer questions and discuss their tribal migration routes from Canada through the Great Lakes region, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois and the Platte Purchase area of Missouri.

Sac and Fox at the Sikeston Cowboy Festival

The portable exhibit on Sac and Fox heritage has been in continuous demand since it was unveiled in June of 2006. During the summer it resided in Sac and Fox communities in Kansas and Oklahoma, and then it moved to Sikeston. The Sikeston Depot Cultural Center is a lovely facility near a city park.

Beth Felice and I had a wonderful day there talking with Sac and Fox craftspeople who had travelled to give a two-day demonstration during the "Cowboy Up!" arts festival.

Read on: http://mohumanities.org/E-News/August07/sikeston.htm

(txt) Chautauquas, Between Fences in Mansfield, Kirkwood Sac and Fox

Volume 4, No. 5: May 2007
Monthly E-News from Michael Bouman, Executive Director
and the Missouri Humanities Council


Making More of Web Pages

A web site about a raid on the village of Deerfield, Massachusetts in the winter of 1704 is worthy of being our lead article. I saw mention of this site in the Summer 2006 edition of History News from the American Association of State and Local History. The web site undertakes to tell the story from the point of view of each of the five cultural groups who had a stake in the outcome of that raid.

The site made a big impression on me because I've been wondering how to tell layered stories of things like the Black Hawk War, the Indian "settlement" of parts of southeast Missouri, or the curious and fascinating heritage of the white and black residents of towns like Fulton in the Civil War. An "inclusive" history of any place would approach the task in the manner of Deerfield, I think. I'll provide the link to Deerfield and some more information on this topic in the attached piece on layers.
Complete article


That's Entertainment Chautauqua Update

Now is your chance to participate in a "living history" festival that your community will remember for years to come!

MHC is now accepting applications from communities interested in hosting MHC's Chautauqua in June of 2008. Information about Chautauqua and community applications is available on the MHC website at http://mohumanities.org/programs/chautauqua/index.htm

You can request postal copies of the information by calling 1.800.357.0909 or sending an email to patricia@mohumanities.org. Applications are due to MHC no later than May 30, 2007. Three Missouri communities will be selected and notified early this summer to allow a year of planning for the event.

As announced in our March E-News, "THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT!" will be the theme for MHC's Chautauqua 2008. "From circus acts to movies, and popular fiction to popular music, THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT! spotlights a broad range of mass entertainment by portraying innovative figures that helped democratize this field. Far from the highbrow, these figures brought often-inexpensive entertainment to new kinds of audiences."

We are also accepting applications from Scholars interested in applying to participate in MHC's Chautauqua 2008. Link here for the Call for Chautauqua Scholars and application instructions. Inquiries should be sent to patricia@mohumanities.org.


May 18-19 Chautauqua in Nevada, Missouri

Notable women from history will take the stage at Cottey College when the Women's Leadership Council of Nevada presents a Community Chautauqua on Friday evening, May 18, and Saturday afternoon and evening, May 19, 2007.

In partnership with the Woman Chautauqua Institute at Cottey College, now in its second year, the public programming will offer a lineup of characters that includes Bess Truman, Settlement House founder and Nobel Peace Laureate Jane Addams, Jacqueline Kennedy, Laura Ingalls Wilder, geneticist Barbara McClintock, Mohawk writer Pauline Johnson, and more.

The Chautauqua performances will take place in Cottey's Missouri Recital Hall, located in the Haidee and Allen Wild Center for the Arts, at the corner of Tower Street and Highway 54 in Nevada. There is no admission charge. An outdoor food court will offer old-fashioned foods and cold beverages at reasonable prices throughout the two-day event.

Nevada is located near the western border of Missouri, 90 miles south of Kansas City and 60 miles north of Joplin. For a detailed schedule and directions to the Cottey campus, please send an email request to: CWL@cottey.edu


"Between Fences" at the Mansfield Community Center

Nearly every year, we are able to help Missouri towns obtain a touring exhibit from the Smithsonian Institution. We like the exhibits that come from the "Museums on Main Street" program (MOMS) because every town that sponsors the exhibit creates all sorts of activities to enhance its value. Typically, more people visit these activities than live in the county!

Spite Fence c. 1906-1910 by Gilbert B. Ellestad. Courtesy Minnesota Historical Society

The Laura Ingalls Wilder Home in Mansfield is taking the lead in creating activities in Mansfield. You can see the "Between Fences" exhibit at the Community Center beginning May 11 and ending June 22. This will be your last chance to see this exhibit in Missouri. Also, be sure to visit the Wilder Home and Museum. It's a destination for tourists from all over the world.

You can find details of all the activities as well as directions to the Community Center at the excellent Wilder Home web site: http://www.lauraingallswilderhome.com


Kirkwood Public Library Hosts Sac and Fox Heritage Exhibit

The touring exhibit on the Sac and Fox Heritage will end its first year of circulation during the month of May at the Kirkwood Public Library, through May 28. Created by Sac and Fox tribal members in three states, the exhibit is a large panel with photographs and text. The exhibit is reserved by various venues through the end of this year, but is available for January and February 2008. The library web site is at http://kpl.lib.mo.us/

I'm scheduled to deliver a talk about the creation of this exhibit on Saturday, May 19 at 2:00 p.m. The Sac and Fox exhibit curator, Sandra Massey, will be with me to share the podium. Replicas of the exhibit in poster size will be available for sale at the Library's gift shop.

Lose Your Mother Book Review
I read an outstanding reflection on the long shadows cast by the institution of slavery. The book is by Saidiya Hartman, and I've quoted just one of many marked passages in my new blog, "Creating Interest" at http://creatinginterest.blogspot.com/2007/04/chosing-your-past.html

(txt) 4/07 Sac and Fox, Bus-eum, Pettis County Museum, Blog-in-progress, Preserving Family Treasures

Missouri Passages
Volume 4, No. 4: April 2007

Monthly E-News from Michael Bouman, Executive Director,
and the Missouri Humanities Council



Sac and Fox Heritage Exhibit in Versailles

The Morgan County Historical Society Museum is a fascinating place to visit. This month it's all the more so because of the touring exhibit designed by the Sac and Fox people with the help of Greg Olson. The exhibit opened last June at the Mark Twain Museum in Hannibal. Tribal elder, Henrietta Massey, is pictured below giving an invocation in the Sac and Fox language on opening day. The exhibit has traveled in Missouri, Iowa, and Illinois since then. You can see it in Versailles until the end of April, and then it moves to the Kirkwood Library for the month of May. It is currently booked through the end of 2007.

The Morgan County Museum is a fascinating place. Gradually, "Do Not Touch" signs are disappearing as Curator Carl Morgan figures out ways of letting people get more enjoyment out of the collection. These days the visitor is able to read the newspaper account of the sinking of the Titanic. It's one of many old pages that Carl thought to make available to visitors by using clear plastic casings for the fragile paper.

The museum occupies the former hotel. Some of the rooms upstairs are furnished as hotel rooms would have been in various historical periods. In the main lobby, you can see a traveling clothing salesman's display book showing the latest fashions for gentlemen in 1921.

The Sac and Fox exhibit is more thought-provoking than virtually every other exhibit on Native Americans in our local museums. Why? Because it is focused on a system of beliefs that are contained within a simple story. I often think about the kinds of stories that express a system of beliefs. There's the story of Alexander Doniphan's refusal to carry out an order to round up Joseph Smith and his band and execute them all in the public square. I saw the text of his refusal on the wall of the Clay County Museum. It struck me that I was looking at one of Missouri's cultural treasures in these words: "I will not do it, because it is murder." Another system of beliefs is embedded in the Christian parable of The Good Samaritan. The story explains who we (the people) are to look out for, and how much (everyone, and without limit). I don't think you can read the Sac and Fox story of The Twelve Boys and come away unmoved by its power of explaining what really matters. In a way, the fashion book from 1921 also asserts what matters. It's interesting to take those two forms of assertion into mind during the same museum visit.

The museum is at 120 North Monroe in Versailles. It's open Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Saturday 9 to 12 noon. (573) 378-5530




German-American Internment, 1941-1948

Regular readers of this E-News will remember a piece by Arthur Jacobs in January 2006 on the deportation of his family during World War II. Arthur returned to live in a foster home in Kansas, he graduated from The College of the Ozarks, and served in the U.S. Armed Forces.

The internment of German-Americans during the World War II era is the subject of an exhibit that has been touring the Midwest for several years. The exhibit tours inside a bus; hence the term "bus-eum."

Our grant to TRACES: The Center for History and Culture is supporting the Missouri tour this month. From what we have heard from our neighboring states, this is fascinating material, well worth a visit. I have summarized the tour schedule on this page:

http://mohumanities.org/E-News/April07/vanished.htm




Missouri Conference on History, April 19-20

I've linked to a flyer describing the sessions and activities at the 49th Missouri Conference on History. The events will take place at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in St. Louis. I think anyone who teaches or studies history will find several things of intense interest here. For example, there's a round table discussion Friday morning about how schools can create lasting partnerships when they implement "Teaching American History" grants from the Department of Education.

The Keynote address, delivered at the luncheon on Friday by Professor James Giglio of Missouri State University, is titled Stan Musial and the Significance of Sports Biography. Great timing for this topic, eh?

http://mohumanities.org/E-News/April07/MOConfOnHist.pdf




Grand Opening of the Pettis County Museum

Who says museums are the domain of retirees? Not in Pettis County, Missouri! Charles Wise, the President of the Historical Society there, is an undergraduate. The fact that he was passionate about history got him elected to a leadership post. The Grand Opening of the new museum will be Saturday, April 14th. There will be a 10 AM ribbon cutting, followed by an open house and special displays till 5 PM. There will be a fundraising raffle in conjunction with the event, as well as a movie night the following afternoon, Sunday, April 15th. The movie is The Great Dictator, a Charlie Chaplin classic featuring Sedalia native Jack Oakie. There is no charge for the movie, though donations are welcome. For more information on this event, email Charles at cwise@murlin.com




Blog-in-progress and other modernizations

My colleagues and I are trying to help new communities of interested people come together in ways we haven't tried (or understood how to try) before. Beth Felice, whose role is like the scout who rides out ahead of a wagon train, is learning how to use internet tools none of the rest of us knew anything about a few months ago. We not only have a blog at MHC, but we have ways of finding humanities news for it. Before you know it, several of us will get the hang of "blogging." In my own small way, I'm learning to use the digital recorder to create audio downloads of my "columns" in the E-Passages. This is our baby step in the direction of actual pod-casting, which is not a form of catch-and-release fly fishing. Take a look at what happens on a blog:

http://mohumanities.blogspot.com/




"Preserving Family Treasures" Web Site

We all have them, dog-eared old photos we've been meaning to protect "soon." We may have a Family Bible or a collection of letters Dad wrote Mom while he was a soldier. Or we may have old news clippings or certificates lying around where the bugs can nest in them. Now there's help in learning how to do a better job. The Library of Congress has put up a new web site called "Preparing, Protecting, Preserving your Family Treasures."

http://www.loc.gov/preserv/familytreasures/index.html

This website provides simple instructions as well as links to more comprehensive information. So, whether you've made a New Year's resolution to take care of keepsakes or you've had some sort of household disaster, this site's for you.