Please Touch Museum's New Centennial Innovations Gallery
FAIN: GI-264602-19
Please Touch Museum (Philadelphia, PA 19131-3719)
Polly McKenna-Cress (Project Director: August 2018 to July 2019)
Charles McGhee Hassrick (Project Director: July 2019 to August 2019)
Charles McGhee Hassrick (Project Director: August 2019 to present)
Implementation
of a permanent exhibition that explores the 1876 Centennial Fair in
Philadelphia.
Please Touch Museum (PTM)’s new Centennial Innovations (“CI”) gallery will highlight the 1876 Centennial Exposition (“the Fair”)’s human stories of discovery and innovation, and those of inequality and upheaval. Held to mark the 100th year of the nation’s founding, the Fair also marked the end of the Civil War and a pivotal moment of Reconstruction. High-tech inventions spurred some visitors to imagine a future of prosperity and wonder. Other attendees—including Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony—chafed against social barriers and hoped for a more just world. Today, PTM is housed in Memorial Hall, once at the center of the Fairgrounds. For CI, PTM will blend its holdings of Fair-related artifacts with physical interactives, imaginative role-play opportunities, digital learning experiences and powerful storytelling to provide children and families an engaging, accessible glimpse into the past and invite dialogue on the nature of invention and progress.
Associated Products
Centennial Innovations (Exhibition)Title: Centennial Innovations
Curator: Charles McGhee Hassrick
Abstract: If you could change the world…what would you create? Who would you become? What would a new world look like? These questions drive "Centennial Innovations," Please Touch Museum’s new, permanent, state-of-the-art exhibit rooted in the magic and necessity of invention. In reimagining how the 1876 Centennial World’s Fair is celebrated and understood, "Centennial Innovations" engages visitors through digital interactives, an illustrated mural, and a stage to share ideas, as well as the City of Philadelphia’s historic Centennial Fairgrounds Model.
Year: 2020
Primary URL:
https://www.pleasetouchmuseum.org/learn/exhibits/all/centennial-innovations/Primary URL Description: Description of the "Centennial Innovations" exhibition on Please Touch Museum's website.