CANON CITY, Colo.—The rare opportunity to visit a Smithsonian Institution outside of the nation’s capital is coming to Canon City.
“Between Fences,” a traveling exhibit offered through Museum on Main Street, will arrive at the Museum of Colorado Prisons for an eight-week stay in September 2010.
“I have been so excited about this for so many months,” said Kay Ellison, prison museum executive director. “I knew about it clear back before September, and I couldn’t say a word.”
Ellison said Canon City will be the first of four or five planned Colorado hosts for the traveling exhibit, which is offered through the Museum on Main Street organization, a cultural project that serves small-town museums and residents of rural America. It is a partnership of the Smithsonian Institution, the Federation of State Humanities Councils and Colorado Humanities.
“The subject of the exhibit—boundaries, place and space—will be central to the visitors’ physical experience,” according to the MOMS Web site, .
Visitors will walk between fences and through gateways, and each fence will be selected to represent a theme and tell a story that illustrates its theme. Exhibit materials also will include tools, photographs and publications.
“The exhibition will engage children and adults while providing a setting for family communications and interaction between unacquainted visitors,” the Web site states. “Our past is defined by the cutting point of barbed steel and the staccato rhythm of the white picket. Built of hedge, concrete, wood and metal, the fence skirts our properties and is central to the American landscape.”
Ellison has many exciting ideas to incorporate community partners for the big event.
“I already spoke to the Department of Corrections about a contest with inmates to get their view of fences,” Ellison said. “Inmates’ thoughts would be such a unique thing, they may make it part of the traveling exhibit in Colorado.
“The library is going to be involved and I hope the city museum might do a ranching and fences display, or something like that. I hope the city will get involved.”
“We’re hoping to use Fremont Center for the Arts as our partners in this,” she said. “We’re also considering a photo contest.”
Ellison also hopes to get schools involved with contests and tours. The Smithsonian anticipates an interest radius of about 100 miles, which is most of Southeastern Colorado. She hopes to open the exhibit over Labor Day weekend.
“Not only will it bring a lot of tourists, but I hope it will increase the interest of local people in all our local museums and cultural things we have here,” Ellison said. “The cultural part of our city is a very important part, and we sometimes tend to forget that. When budget cuts and hard times come along, we forget to support those cultural things, but we need them.”
Ellison said the prison museum will continue to seek community partners as well as volunteers to help with the exhibit next September into October. Fundraising for advertising and other costs will lead up to the event.
Because the Smithsonian Institution does not charge an admission fee, the museum will not be allowed to increase its normal entrance fees. Regular fees of $7 adults, $6 seniors and $5 youth will be charged.
For more information on the traveling exhibit, to volunteer or to form a partnership for the event, call the prison museum at 269-3015.
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On the Net:
Museum of Colorado Prisons:
Freemont Center for the Arts:
