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Exhibition Reviews
"The Times They Are A-Changin'." Outagamie County Historical Society, 330 E. College Ave., Appleton, WI 54911.
Temporary exhibition, June 6, 2006–Dec. 2008. Open Tu–Sa 10–4, Su 12–4. Adults $5, seniors and students with ID $4, children 5–17 $2.50, family $12. 3,000 sq. ft. Matthew Carpenter, project director; Kim Louagie, chief curator; Sharon Clothier, curatorial development and design; Jane Woolsey, curator of education; Ryan Schaub, fabrication and exhibit preparation.
Museum programs include a guided family tour, book club, and movie series.
Internet: exhibition information, http://www.foxvalleyhistory.org/.
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| A county museum's exhibition on the 1960s might give historians pause. Popular cultural representations of the decade have hardened into stereotypes of silly hedonism, cautionary tales, or bland retrospectives of a nation losing its innocence. Will a local exhibition take into account the wealth of new scholarship? Will it tackle the controversial topics of that decade directly and in challenging ways? The Outagamie County Historical Society's exhibition, "The Times They Are A-Changin'," successfully does just that. The introductory panel announces that popular stereotypes such as "sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll" will be questioned and that the decade's history will be examined through the lens of local history. The exhibition's focus on local people and their experiences is its most refreshing aspect, and it generally maintains a complicated view of the period. Through interactive segments and compelling local artifacts, the exhibition communicates much new scholarship on the 1960s and shows the important relationship between national and local historical narratives. |
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For Wisconsin's traditionally conservative Fox Valley, the political birthplace of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the cultural and political transformations of the 1960s produced great contestation. An example of this is immediately apparent to the visitor in a display related to the 1968 musical Hair. Visitors learn that an Appleton, Wisconsin, native, Lynn Kellogg, played the lead role of Sheila in the Broadway production of the play, which addressed "racism, environmentalism, the Vietnam War, and the alienation of youth." However, visitors also discover that Kellogg has since denounced the countercultural play as "one of the primary openers of the Pandora's Box of destruction that devastated my 60s–70s generation, and through exponential expansion, every subsequent generation to the present." That presentation and a later section on the counterculture are commendably untidy and show the designers' willingness to demonstrate the multiple ways people struggled with the cultural transformations of that decade. |
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The section on the civil rights movement is the most impressive and thoroughly developed section of the exhibition. Despite the Fox Valley's distance from the front lines of the movement and its relative lack of racial diversity, the exhibition's designers provide a valuable narrative of both the southern and northern contexts of the movement and their profound effects on the local community. The local connection is demonstrated in the case of Jim Zwerg, a white Appletonian who participated in the freedom rides in 1961. A large picture of a badly beaten Zwerg, his face and suit caked with blood, serves as a powerful centerpiece to the section. Drawn in by the picture, visitors then listen to a recording of Zwerg describing state police abandoning him as an angry mob of white southerners pulled him from the bus and "kicked in his teeth." Why a man from "lily-white Appleton" chose to make such a commitment is a question that visitors are encouraged to ponder. Other presentations in this section illustrate the influence of the civil rights movement locally. A conflict between African American students and the Lawrence University administration over demands for more black students, black courses, and black professors ultimately led to the occupation of the administration building. By utilizing multiple local sources, including newspapers and student pamphlets, the designers take the time to explain that story well, describing the context for black power and the evolution of civil rights during the late 1960s. |
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