Gold Fever!- the making of an exhibit

The big news here at the museum is that we have our first traveling exhibit! While we are mostly focused on Native American and desert work, when we had the chance to display an exhibit on the Gold Rush, we jumped on it.  It arrived almost 2 weeks ago and the official opening date is the end of April. And I'm getting a really good first hand look at what goes into making an exhibit work.

The exhibit that gets sent around is a series of panels with lots of text and some images on them.  Lots were pictures of daguerreotypes which really excited me but also made me sad that we didn't have any of the real thing. Martha Mahard's class has clearly ruined me for reproductions.  We are responsible for providing any artifacts that might enhance the panels.

Everyone knows that very few people are actually going to read text panels all the way through. Especially when they are really heavy on text and there are nearly 20 of them.  People want to see stuff.  We don't have too many artifacts that directly connect to the Gold Rush, but have been able to work with what we have and are in the process of making a pretty cool exhibit.

Jessica cutting newspaper articles

Neal loves building things, so he built a miner's cabin based on one in a panel.  Jessica and I put our library school degrees to good use by doing research for old newspaper articles relating to the CA Gold Rush.  When we've finished printing them out we'll use them as wallpaper in the cabin, as well as a few that are going to be hung on the walls as ads for traveling to CA.  We have some kid's sized clothing to add to the cabin on hooks that kids will be able to try on and get their pictures taken, with a gold pan and a few other little things.  This has taken working until after 8pm several nights in a row to get things the way we want them.

Miner's shack in progress

My favorite part- (remember I am an archivist) is the section I've done in connection to the cabin. One panel mentioned a New Yorker named William Swain who went out to make his fortune and wrote tons of letters and journal entries.  Clearly the panel made it sound like someone had those letters, so I did a little research and found them at Yale's Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library (where I applied for a fellowship several months ago).  They didn't have as many of Swain's letters or journal entries digitized as I'd hoped, but I was able to print out his journal entry from when he first set off for CA, as well as a few letters from along the way.  I transcribed them and two reproductions of daguerreotype photographs of Swain and his wife.  The journal and letters will go on a little writing desk we found with a biography I wrote up on Swain. We're going to put the photographs in a little case and put that on the desk, just like he would have had them when he was writing.  I've done research on what gold would be worth in 1849, what you'd pay for items in the general store while you were out in mining country in 1849, and some other cool stuff that will hopefully make it into the final exhibit.

I now see why it takes so long to set up an exhibit and some of the work that goes into the behind the scenes aspect. It's been a lot of fun so far and I'm looking forward to finishing it up and showing you the finalized pictures- as well as the reaction at our Grand Opening April 27!