jeviadero

After working for much of the semester with Alex, we were finally able to fully launch out World War II exhibit. It took a decent amount of research and organization but, it came out in a way that we think visitors will greatly enjoy. Alex and I spent much of Friday cleaning up the cases and the floor area around them. We spent time getting the information on the walls level so everything looked as professional as it could be. We also made arrows for the floor to help direct people through the exhibit efficiently.

Much of my time going up to our launch day was spent labeling items in the exhibits and also doing some last minute research for Alex. These labels help provide a clearer understanding of some of the items in the cases. Understandably, some of the items are old or never get looked at anymore, so it helps people understand what they are. As attached to this post, my final write ups went on the wall next to my case to finish up out exhibit.

At this point in the culmination of all the research that Alex and I have done, it has finally come to putting the finishing touches on our exhibit. Alex let me take a whole cabinet (seen as attached) and put artifacts in it as a saw fit. I went for the souvenir theme that we had. I included items that were brought home from the war. I found things such as a Nazi dagger, Nazi helmet, and pamphlets that showed the way for soldiers around the town.

As Alex and I finished putting all the cases together, we began putting together our signs that we typed up. We have been going through and gluing the cardstock signs to foam core to mount them. I also have been finishing up the labels for the smaller items that visitors may not be able to identify. At the end of this week we should have everything put together and ready to open at the beginning of next week.

The last few weeks I have spent working on an exhibit based on souvenirs that were brought back from World War II. I have done multiple days of research in local newspapers between 1945 and 1950. I have organized events that were going on in Salem and Roanoke into a timeline that I have submitted into Alex Burke, who is the assistant director of the museum, to look over. While he was checking my timeline out, I was combing through the museum software, past perfect, for photos that we can use for the exhibit. Also, I began to go through physical photo catalogues that were left over from some local history books.

After Alex was able to approve my work with the local timeline, I got to work finalizing the timeline and labeling what he thought were the most important facts I had found into a final timeline. While I was working on that, I was also typing up the original articles that the major information came from. We are shooting to finish this up and have it ready in a few weeks.

During these last two weeks, Alex Burke and I have collaborated on going through newspapers to give an idea on what was going on back home in Salem and Roanoke during World War II. At this point today, we have finished the research from the newspapers and are beginning to look how to frame this information in a concise but informative manner. Since there is a lot of information we gathered from these newspapers, the biggest challenge we face is keeping the write ups for the exhibit short. We also want to avoid cutting out important events too, so this has been a tough task for us so far.

With the write ups being planned and put together, I have been working on using the museum’s software to look in the archives for artifacts that I feel would make sense to be used in the exhibit. I have mainly focused on local items that tie Salem in with World War II. These consist of pamphlets of high school football games that have a mention of it, or just slice of life items that shows where people of the time’s heads were at. Next, the plan is to start accessioning these items, which I will be learning here shortly.

During my first week at the museum I spent time going through all the exhibits there with Mr. Burke and talking about what worked with them and what did not. We discussed lighting and the flow of the exhibits. We also addressed how to funnel people through the exhibits to keep people moving along. We payed special attention to the Biggs exhibit. I had felt that it was the best put together one with the proper amount of lighting and flow that made sense. Mr. Burke had also told me that they had recently repainted the room to so it really warmed the room up a little bit. So, the first two weeks were spent learning about exhibits and how we feel they should be setup.

The first two weeks helped me transition into my current project that I am working on with Mr. Burke. We are currently doing research on World War 2 souvenirs. We are going to create a large exhibit on the souvenirs that the soldiers brought back as well as a timeline of things that were going on here in Salem and Roanoke from 1945-1950. The photo I have included on this post is one of the newspapers that I am looking at for the chronology. I am going month by month and picking out interesting events to put on the timeline we are creating. Soon, we will be looking to identify souvenirs that the museum may have to put out for this exhibit.