LITTLE ROCK — Every four months, a photo exhibit comes down and a new one replaces it at the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale.
With the largest photo collection in the state - about 500,000 images dating from the 1850s - perhaps it’s only natural the same photos don’t hang around long.
Those who want another look, or those who missed the four month window can check out the museum’s Web site, springdalear.gov/shiloh/index.html, says Marie Demeroukas, the museum’s photo archivist/research librarian.
Once an exhibit comes down, it goes right back up - online, that is. The museum now has 10 online photo exhibits, she said.
An exhibit called “Prized Possessions” featuring people posing with treasured bibles, horses and other beloved items, will go online Jan. 16 about a month after its run date at the museum ended.
An exhibit called “Disaster!” - featuring floods, fires, train wrecks and other natural and man-made calamities - opened Dec. 22 and continues through April 10. The oldest photo, from 1880, shows the wreckage left by a tornado that wiped out much of Fayetteville’s town square. The most recent are from the ice storm earlier this year.
The museum’s vast collection hasn’t been digitized - there’s still an onsite darkroom. So, Demeroukas says, putting the photos online shortly after a collection comes down “is a way to get some of our photographs out there.”
The museum started its photo exhibits in 2006.
“Building Beaver Lake” was the first to go online. The introduction online explains that the project to buy property, move graveyards and roads and build the reservoir in the White River Basin cost $43 million, beginning in the 1920s and finishing in 1966.
The photo gallery includes panoramas of the White River circa 1920 and the spiffily dressed members of the Beaver Dam Association sitting for a portrait circa 1950. It also includes interesting facts on each page, like “Number of cemeteries relocated: 39. Number of graves moved: 1,584.”
Another exhibit, “Serving Our Clients: Rural Relief in Newton County,” shows the photo album of Ernest and Opal Nicholson, who served as county administrators of a Works Progress Administration rural relief program in Newton County in the 1930s. They worked to help the poor find jobs or provide necessities like food and clothing, according to the Web site.
“During the Great Depression Newton County was one of the most isolated, rugged, and poorest counties in Arkansas,” the introduction reads. “The timber industry was playing out, jobs were becoming scarce, and a regional drought severely affected farming.”
One photo titled “Home Over There” shows a woman holding a crutch as her daughter and grand-daughter stand at her side in front of a log cabin with a thatched roof. The caption, written by one of the Nicholsons, reads, “This is the cabin of Aunt Vina Jones. She is very ill with dropsy [the swelling of soft tissues] and will probably not live long.”
Demeroukas says of the Nicholson photos, “They’re very evocative of the time. There’s this wonderful visual flavor of the time and verbal flavor of the time.”
A recent exhibit to go online called “Bridging the Gap” discusses the importance of bridges to Northwest Arkansas’ settlement and details bridges throughout the Ozarks from swinging foot bridges to railroad trestles.
The museum hopes putting the galleries online will provide valuable research tools to historians and others interested in Northwest Arkansas.
“We’re certainly hoping teachers might come across these and use them as a resource as well,” Demeroukas says.
Allyn Lord, the museum’s director, said the museum plans its photo exhibits about two years in advance. Input from visitors and employees is used to develop themes. The museum is putting together an exhibit called “The Music of Our Lives” by asking for the public to vote on what artifacts will be displayed. (A ballot is on the museum’s Web site. Voting lasts until April 30.)
“We are experts at preserving things,” Lord said. “But we don’t know all the stories that make up Northwest Arkansas. We depend on our audience.”
The Shiloh Museum opened in 1968 and is operated by the city of Springdale. Aside from exhibits, it boasts three acres of historic buildings, including an1850s log cabin and a barn from the 1930s. It served more than 33,000 people in 2008, from walk-in visitors and school tours to podcast downloads, Demeroukas says.
She said the galleries provide a venue for people to learn about the region’s history anywhere and at any time.
But there’s no true replacement for seeing the exhibits at the museum, she said.
“When you’re coming to the museum you’re actually seeing a photograph printed by a skilled technician,” Demeroukas says. “You have the feeling that you’re at a museum instead of sitting online looking at stuff.”
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