High-Tech Benefits in "New Harmonies"

This is the last month we can accept community applications to host a touring Smithsonian exhibit on American "roots music" in 2009.

You can find a basic description of the exhibit on our web site. This article is all about why you should consider jumping in.


These exhibits are extremely popular in communities because they generate so much spirit and community involvement. The reason is, the exhibit is just the beginning! Host communities often create a local exhibit to go with the Smithsonian one. Where the subject is music, you can imagine the potential! Host communities also organize community activities. Again, just imagine the potential!

Do you have musical instrument makers in the vicinity? They could participate in fascinating ways? Do you have local people who compete in Bluegrass competitions or who represent other American musical traditions? How many people in your town do you imagine learned to play a musical instrument as some point in their lives?

Anything you can imagine about public activities or an exhibit can be enhanced, with our help, by setting a goal of creating some content for a web site. A library or museum might want to learn to create a downloadable audio recording of a local musician, or a podcast of an oral history interview with former students of a beloved band director. Or you might want to learn how to create an interactive feature where people in town can share pictures related to the theme of American music.

Involvement in the Smithson's exhibit program opens up all sorts of doors to involving the community and learning how to extend the life of your work on the internet. For any sponsor town that requests our help, we will organize training in techniques of gathering content so that it can be used in a variety of ways and of displaying content in a variety of formats.

We are very excited about helping people learn to function more comfortably in oral history, documenting, and disseminating. We'll help you set a goal and help you reach it.

The deadline for submitting an application is December 31, though. We want to give the six selected towns many months of lead time to create plans and work with us on ways and means of achieving them!

Contact my esteemed colleague, Patricia Zahn, if you need more information. -Michael Bouman

New Harmonies

We're still accepting applications through December to host the touring Smithsonian exhibit on American Roots Music in 2009. These exhibits are a perennial feature of MHC programming because they help local people generate a huge amount of interest in a historical theme. In fact, the attendance figure for these touring exhibits always exceeds the local population.

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.

Smithsonian "New Harmonies" Touring Exhibit

We're now accepting applications through December to host the touring Smithsonian exhibit on American Roots Music in 2009. These exhibits are a perennial feature of MHC programming because they help local people generate a huge amount of interest in a historical theme. It is always true that far more people visit the exhibit and its activities than actually live in the sponsoring town. More...

Smithsonian "New Harmonies" Exhibit in 2009

Next month we're going to start accepting applications to host the touring Smithsonian exhibit on American Roots Music in 2009. These exhibits are a perennial feature of MHC programming because they help local people generate a huge amount of interest in a historical theme. It is always true that far more people visit the exhibit and its activities than actually live in the sponsoring town.



Check the details at http://mohumanities.org/E-News/August07/new_harmonies.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