Thursday, April 24, 2014

Good - by 'The Way We Worked' exhibit

I have to confess that I wasn't quite sure what to expect with an exhibit coming from the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC!  I have visited their museums not to long ago and left overwhelmed, impressed, thoroughly enjoyed every minute, and with a lifetime of memories.  But I could NOT wrap my head around how we would fit an impressive big impact exhibit into our intimate museum while also giving our visitors the feeling of a big museum exhibit that they would expect from the Smithsonian.  Well - this exhibit was not only big impact in what it delivered, but also compact, tons of photos, content everywhere - even under hats, visual & audio components to enjoy, but it also brought back many memories for our visitors of the types of work they have done in their lives.  Even I was surprised to see photo that brought back an early memory for me - a photo of a large mainframe computer room writing / reading data on large reels of magnetic tape.  It reminded me of one of my early jobs and the beginning of a 32-year career at one company.  We posed the question, 'What was your first job?' and had many dozens of answers.  Some were what many young kids did; delivering newspapers, babysitting, dog walking, but some were surprising, like selling newspapers on the beach.  So Good-by 'The Way We Worked' and Hello to our new exhibit, 'Crystals, Caves, and Kilns'.  Stop by and visit this exhibit.

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Smithsonian exhibit, 'The Way We Worked'

We are now in the last two weeks of this fabulous exhibit.  I feel excited about the increased visitation we have welcomed to the museum and appreciative of the positive praise we have received.  Our community have let us know how proud they are to have an exhibit of this  high caliber here locally to visit and enjoy.  I was visiting with one visitor who was telling me that she was telling all her neighbors and friends that 'they just had to come visit the museum and experience this exhibit'.  Another visitor walked past us so I turned to welcome her and I heard, 'and here is one of my neighbors that I told to come visit!'.   Many of us 'baby boomers' can related to many of the photos and their captions describing the work we did and are surprised to see it thought of as 'history'.  For me it was the large mainframe computer rooms that ran large magnetic tape reels of embedded information.   The memories that were brought back to me.