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.

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.