America I AM: The African American Imprint – Cincinnati Museum Center, Cincinnati, Ohio

“Would America have been America without her Negro people?” – W. E. B. DuBois

Grand Rotunda Flag

This is the question that the exhibit America I AM: The African American Imprint seeks to answer through an amazing exhibition now showing at my home museum THE Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal. It sets out to prove that America would have been radically different today had it not been for African Americans through Cultural, Economic, Spiritual, and Socio-Political imprints.

America I AM was produced and is traveled by my friends at Arts & Exhibitions International – the same group who brought you Real Pirates, two different King Tut exhibits, an exhibit on Princess Diana, and of course, Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt. The exhibit fills both exhibition halls topping out at over 13,000 square feet. There are over 270 artifacts spanning over 400 years of history – American History – in the exhibition and Cincinnati Museum Center has the distinct pleasure of being the Institution of Record for these artifacts making us the caretakers and stewards of these precious pieces.

Upon entry into the exhibit you are greeted by the faces of dozens of African Americans from as contemporary as President Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey to historical figures like Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, and as far back as Benjamin Banneker and Dred Scott. This hallway of historical figures leads us up to the thought-provoking question of the exhibit as posed by DuBois.

The exhibition’s initial gallery takes guests back to the African coast where you can hear the sounds of playful villages while seeing some really amazing pieces such as the ornately carved Yoruba Epa mask and the amazing “Benin Bronze: Oba with Leopard” sculpture from the 1600’s!  The voices fade and the hallway ramps guests into a dreary, drab Cape Coast Castle environment housing the castle doors of no return from a Ghanaian coast lumber and gold trade center turned slave storage castle. Exiting the castle puts guests onto a wharf and then into the new world.

Early America Gallery

Guests are introduced to a time where independence was being fought for, and the air (…and the newspapers) was filled with ideas of liberty and justice and that “all men were created equal.” Well, with some exceptions of course. Artifacts from slaves daily lives including cooking, working, and playing are around a gallery drenched with lights showing chains on the floor. Yet there are also clothes from Frederick Douglass a free black born in Maryland, and one of the few remaining John Dunlap Broadside Declarations of Independence courtesy of Norman and Lyn Lear.

Through another very clever environment that gives guests the feeling of being in the basement of a house as if they were actually traveling the underground railroad, and guests are greeted by a large American flag from 1862 with the words “Black Brigade of Cincinnati” written into one of the stripes.  This is only but one of the many local connection artifacts that we were fortunate to secure to drive the idea to the local level. Not too far is on of the fourteen remaining Thirteenth Amendment vellum copies signed by President Abraham Lincoln, Vice President Hannibal Hamlin, House Speaker Schuyler Colfax (Representative from the Great State of Indiana I might add), and 36 members of the Senate. Around another corner, and a large imposing “Waiting Room for Whites Only” sign begins a darker tale of American History – that of Segregation – the Jim Crow Era had arrived.

Jim Crow Gallery

Was Jim Crow all bad? Not necessarily. Don’t let the Klan robe and toys fool you. It didn’t stop the inventive determination of Ohioan Garrett Morgan whose traffic signal still affects the way we drive today. It didn’t dampen the entrepreneurial spirit of Indianapolis’ Madam C. J. Walker whose hair care products revolutionized the beauty industry. African Americans even decided to create their own sports leagues like the Negro Baseball League teams Cincinnati turned Indianapolis Clowns and the Philadelphia Stars.

The Spiritual imprint gets its own gallery with a Church scene set up and a short film about the spiritual imprint of African Americans Black churches launched civil rights movement. Another local connection artifact in this gallery reminds us of Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth who moved to Cincinnati to pastor a church and was the co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

The Military gallery steps outside of the timeline feel of the exhibit to discuss African American contributions to many conflicts. From Buffalo Soldiers on the western frontier, to the Tuskegee Airmen in World War II and the Double Victory campaign, to more contemporary conflicts such as Vietnam, to the black Four Star General and Chief of the Joint Cheifs of Staff Colin Powell.

The next gallery deals with modern Civil Rights heroes… and heroines such as Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King whose Birmingham Jail cell door has been reproduced for the exhibition, but the original jail cell key is on display to its immediate right. It’s such a beautiful, gold, ornate key for such a negative job. Above the cell door, King’s quote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” reminds us that no matter where in the world injustice occurs it is a problem everywhere that needs addressed.

Birmingham Jail Bars & Key

Of course the exhibition isn’t all doom, and negative, the final gallery, Pop Culture, reminds us all of the amazing things African Americans have done in the worlds of sports, entertainment, science, literature, and government. This amazing and eclectic collection of artifacts include Prince’s guitar from the 2007 Super Bowl Halftime show, funk icon Bootsy Collins outfit from 1978, Alex Haley’s typewriter used to write Roots, and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall’s morning suit that he argued cases like Brown v. Board of Education, in front of the Supreme Court before becoming the first African American Supreme Court Justice appointed by President Lyndon Johnson.

Finally a very uplifting multimedia experience ties the entire exhibit and the four themes together reminding us all that we are a better country today because of all of the trials and triumphs of yesterday.

My Personal Opinion-

Yes, just this once I’m going to devote some space to how I feel personally about this exhibit. It is the single largest exhibit I have ever been privileged to manage. I remember when I first came around one of the many corners in the exhibit and beheld Garrett Morgan’s traffic signal. I felt such personal and professional gratification that African Americans have done so many positive things and made such an amazing impact – the kind of positive impacts I wish to have in my professional and personal life.

My Professional Opinion-

Between this and Cleopatra is there anything Arts & Exhibitions can’t do? The exhibit takes guests on a true emotional journey through 400 years of American History. There are so many terrific artifacts in the exhibit that to see and comprehend them all takes well over and hour and a half and a well worthwhile use of resources. This once-in-a-lifetime exhibit. Get in soon to see the Dunlap Broadside Declaration of Independence because it won’t be in the exhibit the entire time it is here. This is my longest blog post since I started Special ExhiBITs in April and I haven’t even scratched the surface of all the great things this exhibition has to offer. It is an honor to host this exhibit, and a great thing for Cincinnati to be included in one of only 10 cities ever to receive this exhibit. See it now, or possibly see it never.

As DuBois asked, “Would America have been America without her Negro people?” You will learn that emphatically the answer is no.

Website: http://www.cincymuseum.org/explore_our_sites/special_exhibits_events/current_exhibits/

Follow on Twitter: @CincyMuseum

Prince's 2007 Super Bowl Guitar

 

Lost Egypt: Ancient Secrets, Modern Science – Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal – Cincinnati, Ohio

Greetings Special ExhiBITs fans!

It seems like the two weeks between a new blog post go so quickly these days. Maybe it’s because I’ve been working very hard on getting America I AM: The African American Imprint exhibit opened at Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal, and another exhibit a few weeks after that, but lets not talk about that…yet… I want to take a look at the first exhibit I managed during my tenure at Cincinnati Museum Center, Lost Egypt: Ancient Secrets, Modern Science.

Lost Egypt Cincinnati Entrance

Lost Egypt is a 6,000 square foot exhibit that was produced and is traveled by my friends in Columbus, Ohio at the Center of Science and Industry, COSi. The exhibit was fabricated by Minnesota’s favorite museum, the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the artifacts for the exhibit are on loan from the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, New York. The exhibit blends hands-on activities with a great selection of artifacts to tell not an Egyptian story, but to tell a scientific story through the lens of Egyptian history.

If you’re reading my blog for the first time, I will bring you up to speed on the challenges we face in Cincinnati. If you’re an ExhiBITs veteran, this will be old news. In Cincinnati we have two separate special exhibit halls separated by a ramped hallway. This always presents special design and traffic flow challenges. During Gold: The Exhibition, we utilized those hallways by putting items from our collection onto display as an added experience, and then created  a sister exhibit Queen City Gold: Out of the Vault to utilize more space near the exit of the exhibit. For Lost Egypt, we were very fortunate to have these hallways because the exhibit came with a series of enlarged photographs that the COSi team took while they were in Egypt doing their research for the exhibit. The photos set the scene and prepped the visitor for the exhibit.

Orientation Map

Once the visitor reached the main portion of the exhibit they are greeted with a large floor map that orients the visitor to where Egypt is in Africa, and the world. The exhibit basically is split into two sections, the interactive or “fun” side, and the artifact side. The interactive side was packed with fun things for kids and adults to do to understand not only how it might have been to live and work in Egypt, but how it is to work as an archaeologist and an anthropologist. You get to learn the most efficient way to pull large stone blocks to build the pyramids, visit an archaeological dig site, and learn about ground penetrating radar. My favorite is the pot shard activity where visitors  are invited to reconstruct a pot “found” at an archaeological dig site. Visitors can also learn how to speak simple Egyptian phrases, and in “You CAN Take it With You” visitors are invited to think about what types of things they would like to take with them into the afterlife.

Not only do you get to see x-rays of different mummified animals, but the centerpiece artifact of the entire exhibit is a fully intact, well conserved mummy of a teenaged girl, named “Annie.” Of course, that wasn’t exactly a birth-name. Annie is short for anonymous because her name cannot be found.

As I mentioned earlier, we also created a sister exhibit to go along with Lost Egypt centered around Cincinnati Museum Center’s own mummy Umi. Umi comes to us from the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the University of Cincinnati graciously assisted us with performing CAT scans on Umi to determine lots of things including that he in fact is a young male after he was mistaken for a young female for centuries, and magnification of the amulets all over his wrappings.

The exhibit not only teaches that science is important in unlocking the ancient secrets of ancient Egypt, but it also shows that the Egyptian ideals of life after death may not be too unbelievable. After all, Annie is living today teaching people across the country. It’s a small, and quick exhibit to get through, but it is highly interactive, and highly informative.

The exhibit premiered at COSi in the Summer of 2009, we had it in Cincinnati in the Fall of 2009, and it recently opened at the California Science Center in Los Angeles, California and will be there until September 6, 2010. The exhibit is set to travel to the member museums of the Science Museum Exhibit Collaborative. See all the official websites below for more information, and for many more pictures, check my Flickr where I have pictures from the Columbus installation and the Cincinnati installation!

I’m off to the opening of National Underground Railroad Freedom Center’s newest exhibit Textual Rhythms: Constructing the Jazz Tradition, Contemporary African American Quilts tonight, check back here in two weeks to see what I think!

Lost Egypt’s Official Website: http://www.lostegypt.org

COSi’s Website: http://www.cosi.org follow @CosiCols on Twitter

Science Museum of Minnesota Website: http://www.smm.org/ follow @sciencemuseummn on Twitter

Brooklyn Museum: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/ follow @brooklynmuseum on Twitter

California Science Center’s Website: http://www.californiasciencecenter.org/MainPage.php              Follow @casciencecenter on Twitter

Cincinnati Art Museum’s Website: http://www.cincinnatiartmuseum.com follow @cincyartmuseum on Twitter

…and don’t forget us!

Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal

http://www.cincymuseum.org follow @cincymuseum on Twitter

Oh yeah, and me… @Czarshaw on Twitter and Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/specialexhibits/

Me and the Camel