april 2017 Museletter IGNITE your curiosity. DISCOVER your story. Doing Community History By: Leah Davis Witherow CSPM Curator of History & Archivist In our ongoing effort to tell new stories in new ways, the CSPM exhibits team partners with individuals and organizations to create “community curated” exhibits in our Museum Experience Gallery. Utilizing an innovative and collaborative approach, we invite community members to help examine and interpret Pikes Peak regional history. Opening on April 6, 2017, Promoting Patriotism: WWI in Colorado Springs is a timely community-curated exhibit commemorating the 100th anniversary of America’s entry into WWI. From the CSPM Collection The WWI exhibit project began in 2016 through a series of conversations between Museum staff and Fountain Valley School faculty. On February 23, ten FVS juniors who enrolled in Jake Emery and David Racine’s American Studies class arrived at the Museum ready to get to work. After orientation and a background lecture on WWI, students considered the impact of the “Forgotten War” by examining WWI posters from the CSPM collection. They spent the next week consulting primary and secondary sources about wartime propaganda in order to conduct analysis and interpretation. As a result, each student “adopted” a poster in the gallery and was solely responsible for an object label of approximately 300 words. The FVS students gamely took on the challenge to help “tell history” and successfully completed their assignments on time. Through the “community gallery approach,” they also received a “behind the scenes” opportunity to learn about Museum work and see firsthand how CSPM preserves and shares our community’s history. Collections and exhibits staffers spent six hours over two weeks working with the students and gained valuable insights toward improving our community outreach model. In the past CSPM partnered with both adults and elementary school students on Museum Experience projects. In the future we look forward to providing this opportunity to other age groups and schools. pg. 2
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