Highlights Archives
Odd Wisconsin Exhibit Out of the Ordinary
The newest exhibition at the Wisconsin Historical Museum, as its name suggests, is not your typical exhibition. Much like the Society's blog feature and book of the same name, the Odd Wisconsin exhibition presents stories, curiosities, and mysteries that you might not find in a typical history lesson or textbook.
When museum staff set out in the fall of 2007 to determine the next exhibit, they decided to engage the help of potential visitors. With assistance from a local surveying firm, staff devised an extensive online survey that was then emailed directly to thousands of residents of south-central Wisconsin. The survey not only contained questions related to the museum, it also tested four potential interpretive approaches for the new exhibit. Nearly 900 respondents gave valuable and in-depth feedback, and 58 percent of them chose Odd Wisconsin as the approach that interested them the most.
With this information in hand, staff set out to produce the exhibition. The term "odd" has many connotations, so the challenge was to develop a more narrow definition that could encompass a variety of artifacts, documents and images. Numerous survey respondents indicated that they desired and expected an exhibit of the "odd" to give them "unusual and unexpected" stories that they would not find anywhere else. Given the Society's vast and rich collections, the challenge turned out to be not too difficult.
The end result is an exhibition comprising 46 individual displays featuring some of the most compelling, intriguing and curious original materials from the Society's collections. More importantly, each display tells a great story, from whimsical to deadly serious. Just like the content, the presentation style differs from typical historical exhibitions. The interpretation starts at the item level and builds the story by adding layers of context. This was accomplished by using leading questions or teaser statements — directly on the exhibition signage — intended to pique the visitor's interest up front and engage them in a one-on-one manner.
The exhibition would not have been possible without a truly collaborative effort by dozens of Society staff members from nearly every program area. In addition, treasures from the library, archives, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, and the historic sites' collections make up a major portion of the overall content. Given the delicate nature of those materials, items will be rotated in and out throughout the two-year exhibition period.
:: Posted October 6, 2008
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