April 25, 2024
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Oswego museum’s ‘Journey Stories’ exhibit highlights migration and immigration

By BEST OF THE FOX
Little White School Museum Manager Annie Jordan makes a few last-minute adjustments to the museum’s new “Journey Stories” special exhibit. Theexhibit uses a set of seven posters to encourage dialogue and engagement on how movement has defined America. The posters are enhanced by the exhibit of Oswegoland-related travel and immigration related artifacts, documents, and photographs from the museum’s collections.

Little White School Museum Manager Annie Jordan makes a few last-minute adjustments to the museum’s new “Journey Stories” special exhibit. The exhibit uses a set of seven posters to encourage dialogue and engagement on how movement has defined America. The posters are enhanced by the exhibit of Oswegoland-related travel and immigration related artifacts, documents, and photographs from the museum’s collections. School holidays provide added opportunity for families to view the exhibit. (photo provided )

America and its history are a patchwork of many tales that have been woven over time from the voyages of people – both voluntary and involuntary – traveling from city to city, state to state and around the world to find new opportunities. Whether by land, sea or air, travel has played a crucial part in the nation’s economic and cultural identities.

To highlight and explain the importance of migration and immigration, both locally and nationally, the Little White School Museum, 72 Polk St., Oswego, has opened a temporary exhibit, “Journey Stories,” with posters provided by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service.

The exhibit includes a set of seven posters designed to encourage dialogue and engagement on how movement has defined America. The poster exhibit is enhanced by the exhibit of Oswegoland-related travel and immigration-related artifacts, documents and photographs from the museum’s collections.

Visitors are invited to tour the special exhibit in the museum’s Roger Matile Room through February. Regular hours are from 1 to 5:30 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays; 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays; and 4 to 9 p.m. Mondays. The museum is closed to visitors Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Admission to both the museum and “Journey Stories” is free.

Especially developed to engage middle school and high school students, but including information of interest for all ages, “Journey Stories” explores how movement has shaped the nation’s history. The posters offer a broad look at American expansion and migration, from the arrival of the earliest European settlers and subsequent Native American displacement to the effects of transportation advancements on modern mobility.

Enhancements to the poster exhibit use artifacts – ranging from a bearskin coat to stone tools manufactured locally by Native People – to help tell the story of how transportation has shaped the Oswego area, from prehistoric times to the area’s present-day population growth. Those themes also are echoed in exhibits in the museum’s core gallery exhibit.

For information on “Journey Stories” or the Little White School Museum, visit littlewhiteschoolmuseum.org, call 630-554-2999 or email info@littlewhiteschoolmuseum.org.