EXHIBITS & INTERPRETATION

A critical part of Caledonia Northern Folk Studio’s consulting work has been partnering with diverse organizations & communities to develop adaptable pop-up exhibits — outside of museum walls — to fit a variety of needs. CFNS-curated & co-curated exhibits have been featured at farmers’ markets, grocery stores, nature centers, community parks, elementary school gymnasia, Black cultural arts festivals, historic homes, & more — in collaboration with community elders, conservation leaders, oral history narrators, & K-12 students. This collaborative approach to exhibit curation is a core part of our commitment to mobilizing leading-edge practices in community-collaborative interpretation to serve & engage multiple audiences through stories that matter. Our projects have tended to emphasize & amplify the local, with an eye to possibilities for regional interconnections to highlight larger historical & cultural trends, & patterns of significance. Our exhibit toolkit has traditionally combined archival research with community-centered, documentary arts methods — including house-conducted oral history & folklife interviews & photography: producing exhibits that sit squarely between public folklife & public history interpretive methods.

Since 2015, we’ve curated or co-curated almost a dozen freestanding mobile & pop-up exhibits (some with digital components) for a wide range of non-profit organizations — including history museums, nature centers, plant medicine advocacy & preservation organizations, county folklife organizations, schools, farming organizations, & more. Our exhibit work has been funded by state, regional, & national arts funders — including the Ohio Arts Council, ArtsMidwest, & the National Endowment for the Arts — with additional support by local private-sector & philanthrophic partners. A sample of our exhibit & interpretive projects are presented here. See below for a brief selection of physical & digital exhibits produced by CNFS!

We are grateful, over the past eight years, for the opportunity to closely collaborate with brilliant historian of environment, labor, & the built environment & current architectural historian Jeffrey P. Nagle as co-curator & research lead for our history-themed exhibits: including Dr. Kersey Thomas: Intersectional Abolitionist (for the Marlboro Township Historical Society), The Great Migration to Marion, Ohio and Marion 1919: Remembering a Lynch Mob, Imagining Repair (for Marion Voices Folklife + Oral History); & Caledonia Conservationists: Prairie Environmentalism Along the Whetstone (for Terradise Nature Center).

Except where noted, all exhibit graphic design is produced in-house by Caledonia Northern Folk Studios by Jess Lamar Reece Holler and/or Jess Lamar Reece Holler & Jeffrey Paul Nagle.

Beyond exhibits, CNFS has also been at the helm of devising a diverse range of other interpretive products & modalities: including dozens of oral history projects (with accompanying interpretation), three DIY-published books, radio & audio segments, brochures & pamphlets, walking tours, community festivals, ‘zines, arts/culture policy advocacy strategy, & live, Zoom-based cultural & arts programs.

BUILD-YOUR-OWN Ohio historical marker!

Co-curated with architectural historian & former Marion Voices Historian-in-Residence (2023-2024) Jeffrey P. Nagle, this 8-panel exhibit project on the making of Marion Voices’ new West Side // Shantytown Ohio Historical Marker at Marion, Ohio’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Park was created for Marion Voices’ 5th-Annual Marion Black Joy Summerfest as 2025’s annual pop-up exhibit. Designed to complement Marion Voices’ 2023 Marion 1919: Remembering a Lynch Mob, Imagining Repair exhibit, this new exhibit details the process of organizing a community group in Marion, Ohio to propose, research, & nominate Marion’s first-ever Ohio Historical Marker about Black history. The exhibit shares our unique process alongside information about the Ohio Historical Marker program, interpretive uses of Ohio Historical Markers, an overview of Black history-related Ohio Historical Markers in North-Central Ohio, and a helpful “disambiguation field guide” comparing Ohio Historical Markers to other kinds of historical & cultural markers also present on the landscape in Ohio.

DR. KERSEY THOMAS: INTERSECTIONAL ABOLITIONIST

Co-curated with architectural & labor historian Jeffrey P. Nagle, this freestanding, 15-panel exhibit project was developed for the Marlboro Township Historical Society in Stark County, Ohio, with funding from the America-250 Ohio Commission. Sharing the story of ex-Quaker abolitionist doctor Kersey Thomas & his Stark County home & office — now stewarded by MTHS — this dynamic exhibit explores the intertwined political committments of a group of North-Eastern Ohio abolitionists concerned with ending slavery, promoting the rights of women, & building expanded opportunities in medical education. Originally contracted to write the successful National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Dr. Kersey Thomas Home & Office, CNFS was thrilled to be brought back to develop this flexible exhibit — written for a general adult audience — in addition to a takeaway brochure & keynote presentation, delivered at MTHS’s Fall 2024 Annual Meeting.

THE GREAT MIGRATION TO MARION, OHIO

Co-curated with historian Jeff Nagle, and in collaboration with Ms. Linda Sims, Ms. Jessie Thompson, & Ms. Maxine Thomas, THE GREAT MIGRATION TO MARION, OHIO was developed for Marion Voices Folklife + Oral History for Marion Voices’ Marion Black Joy Summerfest 2024, with support from the Marion Community Foundation & OhioHealth. Rooted in new oral history interviews with three Marion County Black residents, this exhibit tells a contextualized, hyper-local story of the Great Migration to Marion County through the stories of three families from three Southern communities that came to call Marion, Ohio home: Harris County, Georgia; Wilkes County, Georgia; and Sunflower County, Mississippi. By combining excerpts from oral history interviews with archival research, primary source newspaper documents, & connections to the present, this exhibit invites our community to better understand the roots & routes that make up Marion County, Ohio.

MARIOn 1919: remembering a lynch mob, imagining repair

Co-curated with historian Jeff Nagle from an original research concept developed in collaboration with Johnnie Jackson, MARION 1919: REMEMBERING A LYNCH MOB, IMAGINING REPAIR is a freestanding, 7-panel exhibit developed for Marion Voices Folklife + Oral History to accompany an Ohio Historical Marker nomination for a new marker commemorating the history of Marion, Ohio’s catastrophic 1919 lynch mob — which drove 200+ Black families from Marion’s West Side; and to tell the story of the reconstitution of Marion’s West Side as a hub of Black community life during the Great Migration period. This unique exhibit was developed as the culmination of a season-long community co-curated research & writing process involving a team of seven community elders: including Ms. Tara Dyer, Ms. Linda Sims, Ms. Jessie Thompson, Ms. Maxine Thomas, & Ms. Katie Reese-Hairston, supported by the Marion Community Foundation, Ohio Arts Council, & OhioHealth. This exhibit debuted at Marion Voices’ Marion Black Joy Summerfest 2024, held at MLK Park on the West Side of Marion, Ohio.

CALEDONIA CONSERVATIONISTS: PRAIRIE ENVIRONMENTALISM ALONG THE WHETSTONE

Co-curated with environmental historian Jeff Nagle for Terradise Nature Center, with archival & graphic design support from David & Jed Haldeman, and with funding from the Ohio Arts Council, Caledonia Conservationists: Prairie Environmentalism Along the Whetstone is a 15-panel pop-up exhibit & accompanying digital exhibit (designed by Jed Haldeman) that tells the intertwined stories of the local history and grassroots prairie conservation movements in the Sandusky Plains region of North-Central Ohio, focalized thru the life stories of Terradise Nature Center’s founders: artists, historians, community organizers, & naturalists Trella & Ray Romine. Bringing together deep-time perspectives on the ecology of North-Central Ohio, the formation of the Olentangy & Scioto Rivers, & the Sandusky Plains with details gleaned from an accompanying four-interview oral history project, Caledonia Conservationists situates an important & undersung regional environmental movement in critical conversation with the Bicentennial-era rise of public history organizing in Marion County: making it one of the first exhibits of its kind to interpret the shared roots & influences of local history & local conservation organizing at the community level.

THE OHIO HERBAL ELDERS PROJECT (2.0)

Curated for United Plant Savers in Meigs County, Ohio, as the culmination of a year-long oral history project amplifying diverse plant medicine traditions & practitioners across Ohio, this physical exhibit accompanied a photography exhibit with original documentary photography from the project, plus a special loan of photography by herbalist, acupuncturist, astrologer, & photographer Christian Totty of LOAM Acupuncture in Lima, Ohio for a grand opening at UPS’s Goldenseal Medicinal Plant Sanctuary in Meigs County. Kelsey Siekkinen worked to design & build-out the digital version of the exhibit, which combines the physical exhibit’s interpretive content with extended herbalist biographies, project photographs, & full-length oral history interviews with the herbalists. Featuring life history interviews with Rebecca Wood, Christian Totty, Peter Borchard, & Diane Sette. The Ohio Herbal Elders Project 2.0 was funded by ArtsMidwest; following an initial grant for an earlier single-interview project with Meigs County herbalist Paul Strauss in 2021.