Project Showcase: Museum on the Move
14 May 2013 – editors
This 1954 Airstream trailer is the home of UL Lafayette’s Museum on the Move. Photo: Museum on the Move.
Building upon our innovative approaches to teaching and practicing Public History, the History Department at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette is proud to announce an exceptional project called Museum on the Move. Public History students will outfit a vintage Airstream trailer (left) with an interpretive exhibit that will then hit the road to take history directly out of the classroom and to the public. Exhibits will be created on a rotating basis and require the melding of two courses and a cohort of students.
The first course will be a traditional history course where students conduct research projects geared toward the planned exhibit. The next phase of the project is for a Museum Studies course where students re-craft the research done in the first class to create exhibit components that they will install in the trailer. Once the exhibit is up and rolling, the trailer will be sent out on short runs to venues around the state where the students’ (and the program’s) work will be on display.
The first planned exhibit will be on Louisiana Women and it is being timed to coincide with the publication of Louisiana Women: Their Lives and Times, Volume 2 (University of Georgia Press) being edited by the department’s own Dr. Mary Farmer-Kaiser. Students currently enrolled in her course on Louisiana Women are pursuing their studies with an eye toward the future exhibit and are excited to be a part of something with such potential for hands-on success. In the end, it is our intent for the program to teach students the methods and value of creative approaches to practicing history and to establish a recognizable product in the form of rotating exhibit topics in a compelling package. The trailer has been purchased, the class is underway, and everything is coming together.
~ Bob Carriker, University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Kudos and caution to you on your airstream journey. While I read the press release, I had many flashbacks — to the American Bicentennial especially, when every state had its version of the traveling show-and-tell in a freight car, panel truck, converted bus or trailer. And to earlier SNL days with Chevy Chase’s unforgettable line “I’m Chevy Chase and you’re not!” And finally to early days in public history when we tended to feel like missionaries. Turns out, we were not; every train, bus, and truck encountered more history “out there” than could ever be contained in a single vehicle; every effort to promote history, we learned, was only successful if it was tied to the local story and engaged it directly. And, lo and behold, there are a lot of people out there who are not, admittedly, Chevy Chase, but then he is not any one of them either. Maybe some thinking beyond student development would add to the project. Is there a possibility to focus on areas of the state that are underserved by local historical societies? Or to develop new relationships with local historical societies? Or to be connected to other state projects (for publication, say) so the trailer could be gathering history not just exhibiting it? Circuses have a great reputation for traveling and bringing a memorable experience to the locals; traveling salesmen, not so much. Happy trails, either way.
I have to admit, that it is a very clever approach…the airstream alone is a cool idea. Is this something that the LA Humanities Council is interested in supporting?