Road Reports

Guest Post: Experience of Hosting New Harmonies - Part 2

For the next few weeks, the Road Reports Blog is lucky enough to have a guest blogger!  Cherry Bailey, Projects Coordinator for the Barry County Museum in Cassville, Missouri will be posting on her experience hosting New Harmonies. 

From years of seeing Museum on Main Street exhibits cross the country, we MoMS-ers have seen it all.  I can tell you that for the most part, a community's "MoMS" experience has everything to do with commitment.  It's a lot of work to host a MoMS exhibit, any former host will tell you that; in the end though, it's all worth it. From the first moment I spoke to Cherry on the phone, I could tell that she was putting her heart and soul into New Harmonies.  Cherry and I spoke several times that month, often about Cassville's success with New Harmonies. When I called most recently to ask Cherry to write a blog post, she agreed without hesitation.  Of course!  Many thanks to Cherry for doing this! We at MoMS hope that Cherry's experience will help to guide those of you who are starting out, and bring back fond memories to former hosts.  Enjoy.

-- Tara O'Connor, Museum on Main Street, Washington, DC

Our first order of business was a fund raiser.  Can you believe someone contacted US wanting to partner with us for a fund raiser?  Yes, we have New Harmonies to thank for that as well!  Our ever so fabulous volunteers covered the county securing items for a silent auction.  We partnered with two schools and many other culinary experts for pies for an auction, and the school decorated boxes for them too.  Volunteers made chili for the evening, and the Possum Holler Fiddlers agreed to provide entertainment.  The Barry County Pioneer Days was a tremendous success, and now we had a bit of working capital.

They came for chili . . . .     

They came for the silent auction . . .   

They came for pies . . . .                               

They came for music . . .  at BARRY COUNTY PIONEER DAYS

March through June were busy, busy months with 23 meetings held, and over 230 volunteer hours logged planning, planning and planning.  Prior planning prevents problems—or so we were told.  At the very least they prepared us to deal with them.   We had a schedule.  We had commitments; we had big ideas and even bigger hopes.  What we didn’t seem to have enough of was TIME.  Hey, where did the first half of the year go anyway?

How do we let people know?  How do we get them to come?  Well, let me be the first to say, having an editor from a local newspaper chairing the media committee was brilliant.  And totally her idea.  Lindsay Reed was as enthusiastic and as eager as anyone to see this project succeed.  What a great job she did on press releases, articles and suggestions.  THANKS LINDSAY! 

Another thing we did we are somewhat proud of, we used hand held fans to get our schedules out.  It was summer . . . it was hot . . . and we didn’t have too much trouble passing those out. 

June 4 we started clearing our gallery of exhibits, and the items pledged for our complementary exhibits began to arrive, quickly to be put under lock and key until time to display them.

June 14 – IT’S HERE.  A small group stayed late to unload the 19 crates we had been waiting for for over a year.  HOLY SMOKES IT’S HERE!

-- Cherry Bailey, Barry County Museum, Cassville, Missouri

Guest Post: Experience of Hosting New Harmonies

For the next few weeks, the Road Reports Blog is lucky enough to have a guest blogger!  Cherry Bailey, Projects Coordinator for the Barry County Museum in Cassville, Missouri will be posting on her experience hosting New Harmonies. 

From years of seeing Museum on Main Street exhibits cross the country, we MoMS-ers have seen it all.  I can tell you that for the most part, a community's "MoMS" experience has everything to do with commitment.  It's a lot of work to host a MoMS exhibit, any former host will tell you that; in the end though, it's all worth it. From the first moment I spoke to Cherry on the phone, I could tell that she was putting her heart and soul into New Harmonies.  Cherry and I spoke several times that month, often about Cassville's success with New Harmonies. When I called most recently to ask Cherry to write a blog post, she agreed without hesitation.  Of course!  Many thanks to Cherry for doing this! We at MoMS hope that Cherry's experience will help to guide those of you who are starting out, and bring back fond memories to former hosts.  Enjoy.

-- Tara O'Connor, Museum on Main Street, Washington, DC

Part One, Initial Planning

Our journey began in the spring of 2009 when our then less than two-year-old museum was selected as a host city for New Harmonies. We went WILD with excitement. Then we went for training. That night Kathy, our director, and I were staring at each other with the deer in the headlights look wondering WHAT we had signed on for. What were we thinking? New Harmonies was by far the biggest thing to happen to the Barry County Museum! Could we possibly pull this off?

We did some preliminary planning, cast out a net and received a few nibbles, a few ideas, and then, well, life kind of got in the way. Hey, we had until June of 2010, right? 

The exhibit was relatively close to us in September, so we called a hasty meeting of people we hoped to entice to come on board, gave them an overview of the SITEs program, of the New Harmonies display, of some of our thoughts and plans, and then a fair number of them did take the hour drive to see the display.  Encouraging. They showed interest. Yay. AND the rest of the staff finally got to see the exhibit “in person”, and they too started getting the NH fever. Big Yay.

Then came winter. Once again life happened. But once again Patricia Zahn and the Missouri Humanities Council came through. Kathy and I attended an installation workshop in January. We were asked to bring a list of activities/programs we planned on, and also were asked what our goals were for hosting a Smithsonian Institution display. Holy cow, did we have a list of things we wanted to do. Our facility hosts a weekly Rotary Club luncheon on Wednesdays, so that day was pretty well out as far as us having a program, but what crazy person planned something for EVERY OTHER day of the week??? And thankfully, said crazy person soon learned we didn’t have the licensing to host the programs planned for Monday activities. The second part of our assignment was easy. Our goal as a host was to create more public awareness, let people know we exist, and to partner with as many area organizations as we possibly could. We are a county museum, and we wanted as many communities and cultures from Barry County represented as we could possibly reach.

So, now we were looking at a calendar that read February, 2010, had an enthusiastic staff, and a lot of vague interest. Patricia Zahn, to the rescue again. Honestly, we should have gotten that girl a white hat!  She rode in here, attended our planning meeting and we left the meeting with committees AND committee chairmen—a group of people on fire and ready to work. And so the REAL journey began.

-- Cherry Bailey, Barry County Museum, Cassville, Missouri

Grand Finale Garners Grand Praise

The MoMS team recently received some motivational news from Warrensburg, Missouri.

 A review of Warrensburg's New Harmonies Grand Finale Concert by TV/Radio talk-show host, Mark Pearce, illumined the exhibit's positive effect on the community -- and vice-versa! The people of Warrensburg worked hard to magnify the exhibit's significance within their community by incorporating numerous varieties of music into their programming events. In his review, Mark Pearce gives us a taste of the dynamic musical spirit evoked by Warrensburg's impressive effort:

“Having recently witnessed the Grand Finale Concert for Johnson County’s New Harmonies celebration I must confess certain optimism for the performance arts in the Western Missouri region.

'Why?' You ask?

Because I have never seen such a collection of local performers – representing so many musical    genres – live and on stage and proud to just…to just belt it out.  We’ve not had a template for local musicians to celebrate their work before an appreciative, general audience. I must extend congratulations to the scores of people who made the New Harmonies arts and exhibition series such a success. Chief among them was Lisa Irle, Director of the Johnson County Historical Society and curator of the Johnson County Historical museum.  It was Lisa’s foresight, incessant determination and her life-long list of friends and acquaintances that made the entire series so inclusive and dynamic.

And, leaving out many others, I’d like to single out Warrensburg resident and radio show host Eddie Osborne who developed a weekly series of musical performances throughout the New Harmonies month and who produced the Grand Finale Concert. Eddie’s vision was inclusive and designed to show the breadth of local talent – many usually resigned to perform only in near-empty halls and byways. And Eddie’s decision to showcase The Nace Brothers gave this iconic group an opportunity to perform before a swath of the population who don’t tend to hit the night spots where the group tends to perform. So, through the New Harmonies celebration and the Grand Finale Concert we all grew musically.

Warrensburg’s local music scene has never had such potential as it does right now.”

-- Mark Pearce – KMOS-TV, 90.9 The Bridge 

                                       
                     
Many thanks go out to Lisa Irle and the Johnson County Historical Society for bringing this lively review to our attention.

 -- Roxanne Berschler, SITES -- Washington, D.C.

On the Road Again (and We Love It)

One of the things I most appreciate about working with Museum on Main Street is the opportunity we have to visit so many interesting places in the U.S. and to meet wonderful people from every corner of the country. In response to a question posed by our Publications office earlier this week, my MoMS Smithsonian-based colleagues Carol Harsh and Terri Cobb and I sat down to figure out just how many miles we had logged traveling this year for MoMS.

Can I get a drum roll, please? After Carol visits Indian Springs, Georgia next week, the three of us will have traveled 67,299 miles for MoMS in 2009. And, we got the chance to visit fascinating places big and small like Alliance and Omaha in Nebraska; Kodiak, Alaska; Kirksville, Missouri; Renton, Washington; Tuscumbia, Alabama; Berkeley Springs, Grafton, and Petersburg in West Virginia; Kingsland and Carrollton in Georgia; Hagatna and Asan in Guam; Sidney, Ohio; Sycamore and Chicago in Illinois; Austin, Texas; Indianapolis, Indiana; Lindsborg, Kansas; Clinton, Mississippi; Okmulgee, Oklahoma; Enderlin and Bismarck in North Dakota; Ocean City, Maryland; and Hanley Falls, Minnesota. We can't even begin to imagine how many additional miles our Federation of State Humanities Council colleagues, our state humanities council partners, and the exhibitions themselves traveled as part of this project. My math-challenged brain can't handle it. But, one thing is sure, we have the enormous privilege of serving and experiencing communities everywhere.

We're looking forward to visiting your state and meeting you during our travels in 2010.

-- Robbie Davis, MoMS/SITES, Washington, DC

A Spoonful of Osceola

    Osceola Missouri has some very interesting tales from its experience with the New Harmonies exhibit, which visited their community from May 9 to June 20, 2009. Osceola’s local exhibit featured regional entertainers of the past and present, in addition to a display of records and musical instruments used by Osceola residents. One of the local exhibit highlights was a performance on an 150 year old grand piano! This piano carries much historical significance for the folks of Osceola – having been passed down through generations of the Lewis clan, this baby grand was shipped across the country via boat and ox wagon, and later survived the 1861 burning of Osceola. In 1984 the piano was restored to playing capacity, and was recently donated to the St. Clair County Historical Society by the Lewis family at the New Harmonies exhibit opening this past May 2009.

Osceola programming included a Native American festival which centered on tribal dance. Over 100 Native Americans participated in this heritage-based musical performance. Of special interest was the beautiful tribal clothing donned by the performers:

Cooperation within the community was a key element to Osceola’s exhibit success.The town of 785 welcomed 1,828 visitors to the New Harmonies exhibit! Partners were wide-ranging, including the city government, chamber of commerce, local garden clubs, quilt guilds, sororities and churches. Joan McPeak, president of St.Clair Historical Society, affirmed the exhibit’s positive impact on the community’s collaborative spirit with her statement; “We so appreciated the opportunity to have the new Harmonies exhibit in our museum. Three other organizations joined forces to sponsor this event…This is one of the first times that I can remember such cooperation between all these entities…It was a great experience!”

Joan shared this colorful anecdote from the exhibit with us:

“The 'spoon' display created more interest than any of the others, I believe. Richard Sunderwirth, local musician and historian, came every time we had a group of school children touring and demonstrated the spoon playing by accompanying a CD of “Under the Double Eagle.” This encouraged the children to experiment with the spoons on the kiosk. There was one little boy who brought his parents back on the Saturday after his whole class had been to the exhibit. He stationed himself at the spoon display and worked on it the whole time (about two hours) that his parents were viewing the rest of the exhibit.He was about 10 or 11 years old and so polite. If someone else came by that section he would step aside until they finished looking and then go right back to working on the spoons. I was really impressed with his interest. He told me that his grandfather had promised to make him a wooden set to play.”

Looks like Osceola had a spoonful of fun with this exhibit!

We truly appreciate the effort put forth by this community. Many thanks to Joan McPeak for this exhibit update.

- Roxanne Berschler, SITES, Washington, D.C.