A version of CVM’s Farm Life exhibit is currently on a two-year tour stretching from Pennsylvania to New Mexico.

For some years, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has been looking for ways to increase the audience for exhibits it funded. A consulting team reviewed a number of institutions with NEH-supported exhibits, including CVM.

In 2003, an NEH Request for Proposals invited agencies that produce traveling exhibits to suggest how a new traveling program might come about. ExhibitsUSA, based in Kansas City, entered into a three-year $1 million cooperative agreement to develop “NEH on the Road.”

The NEH presented ExhibitsUSA with 16 possible candidates. In March 2004, the NEH announced the final four to be developed as touring exhibits. NEH selected exhibits from the Asia Society of New York City; the Henry Ford Museum, Detroit, Mich; UCLA's Fowler Museum of Culture and History; and the Chippewa Valley Museum: Farm Life.

ExhibitsUSA has now developed 2,000-square-foot traveling versions of those four. The size limit was chosen so that more small- and medium-size museums could host the exhibits. Host institutions were selected in American communities with populations of 300,000 or less.

CVM worked closely with Exhibits USA to develop the traveling exhibit based on its own Farm Life exhibit. CVM staff worked with Exhibits USA’s Art McSweeney on the project.

This traveling version opened December 15 at the Dacotah Prairie Museum in Aberdeen, S.D., then went to Sherman, Tex., Owatonna, Minn., Fort Morgan, Colo., Alpine, Tex., Mill Run, Penn., Crystal Lake, Ill., Charleston, Ill., and Milwaukee, Wis. (was scheduled for Trimborn Farm, Greendale, Wis.). The tour continues.

Click here to see images of the traveling exhibit as installed at the Fort Morgan Museum. Will open in a new window. Close that window to return here.