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Three Weeks to Go!

Sarah Anderson — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 14:35:00 -0500

This is my favorite part of exhibit design. It's that time in the process when all the planning and designing starts to come together. Last week, you might remember the You Are There space looking like this:

Well, as you can see from how it looks this week, our fabricators, Roger and Jim, are well on their way to completely transforming the space:

After removing all the brick and painting everything black, they are now installing the wood planks that will make up the walls of our 1913 relief station.

We have big plans for the room that prepares our visitors before they travel back in time. Some of you might remember the little room that we had for our Prohibition exhibit being on the cozy side. Our team decided to extend that space into a larger exhibit room that will be able to adequately house all the important content we have planned.

Our design interns from Herron School of Art and Design, Cory and Ellie, spent a lot of time in the room during its construction. Being in the space with your sketchbook in hand really helps your designs translate from drawings into physical objects.

Roger and Jim extended the walls, drywalled and prepared the space for painting.

The space will be very dramatic. We are blowing up two images of the destruction from the 1913 flood from our collection and wallpapering the space. Our interns from the Art Institute of Indianapolis, Lani and Jojo, painted the walls last week. This creates a nice smooth surface for the large images.

Things are very busy in our studio. The team is working hard on all the little elements that will come together over the next three weeks.

Lani is making a custom font based on period appropriate hand writing just for this exhibit. We will use the final font throughout the relief station. We always reference original items from the time period when dressing the space. These custom reproductions make each You Are There space unique and realistic.

The larger items are worked on, in stages, by multiple people. The Senior Director of Information Technology, Luke, has been spending time in our studio testing out an interactive developed by our design intern, Ellie.

Ellie has been designing and developing this beautiful touchscreen interactive for the exhibit for many weeks. When using the touchscreen, the user will feel like they are looking at images through a window. Roger built this custom box for the touchscreen inside a vintage window. It is gorgeous in person. I can't wait for the touchscreen to be installed inside and see it hung on the wall.

It's all starting to come together. Check back in a week to see how far we've come!

You Are There 1913: A City Under Water opens to the public on March 26th.

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Sarah Anderson is the exhibit designer for IHS. Sarah is a TEDTalk loving, digital artist with a passion for design thinking.

Making of You Are There 1913: A City Under Water

Sarah Anderson — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 10:00:00 -0500

Our latest You Are There exhibit will take visitors back in time to experience an Indianapolis relief station in the midst of the 1913 floods that ravaged the Midwest.

The flood exhibit is being installed in the space that once was You Are There 1920: Busted! Prohibition Enforced. While it is sad to see an exhibit go, especially one that was as beloved as our 1920s police station, I do love a good before and after.

This tear-down has been quite remarkable! Our fabricators, Roger and Jim, have been working very hard, tearing down walls and pulling down the brick, even moving an extremely heavy vintage jail cell!

I will be posting weekly updates of the build so you can witness the transformation yourself. Be sure to come check out this exhibit on March 26!

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Sarah Anderson is the exhibit designer for IHS. Sarah is a TEDTalk loving, digital artist with a passion for design thinking.

A Fresh Perspective

Eloise Batic — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 09:35:00 -0500

Last week I had the honor of joining President and CEO John Herbst and Vice President of Development Andrew Halter on their annual trip to Florida to meet with our members that are lucky enough to winter in the Sunshine State. What a wonderful opportunity to not only attend some incredible events, but also to spend time talking with members about the exhibitions they have visited, upcoming projects they look forward to, and potential stories they would like to see us cover in the future. Day-to-day job responsibilities can prevent us from sometimes taking the time to get out and talk with people about the thing we all have in common ... our love of history.

We spent three nights in Florida and hosted receptions in three towns during our trip. The first night’s reception was at the home of IHS Trustee Mag Russell and her husband, Steve, in Naples, where we were welcomed as houseguests and invited to speak about the work of the Indiana Historical Society in a setting that screamed history ... between the old world mantelpiece, the Italian fresco ceiling and the objects that once spent time in Cole Porter’s Parisian apartment. The next night we traveled to the Sanibel Island home of longtime members and soon-to-be-Living Legends, former IHS Trustee Dr. George Rapp and his wife, Peggy, where I spoke about the You Are There exhibition program standing on a balcony with a backdrop of ocean waves. And lastly, we were guests in the Boca Grande home of Will and Cotton Hanley, where I had the honor of talking about our You Are There 1955: Ending Polio experience and the upcoming You Are There 1913: A City Under Water project with people who connected to the stories on a personal level in a myriad of ways.

I learned so much during my trip. About our members, about the incredibly hard but rewarding work of our Development and Membership staff, and about how proud I am of the You Are There series and the Indiana Historical Society. I also learned that one can take a vial of fake polio vaccine on an airplane, as long as it travels in checked luggage. A useful tidbit among of week filled with new perspective, appreciation and experience.

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Eloise Scroggins is the director of exhibitions research and development at the IHS. She believes that telling a good story involves not only solid research and impeccable design, but most importantly, a good sense of humor and a playful imagination.

Transferring Images to Wood

Sarah Anderson — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 08:00:00 -0500

In Exhibit Design, every day is a chance to try out a new technique. The Exhibits team discovered that transferring images to wood is easier than one might think! Here's how it works, step by step, so you can try this at home.

To get started, all you need is some laser jet prints, gel medium and Mod Podge. You can buy these items at any craft store.

These wooden signs were assembled and glued together by our fabricators, Roger and Jim. They are the perfect base for our exhibit signage. Roger and Jim distressed the surface of the wood with a palm sander.

One of our fantastic interns, Cory Wright, was the one who taught us the process. Cory spent the previous week testing the process on scrap pieces of wood. This ensured that he would get a good result once he moved to the larger signs. If you are planning to try this at home, I highly recommend testing the process on a scrap piece first before moving to your final material.

Cory made tabloid-sized prints of his design on our in-house laser jet printer. In order for the image to transfer, you have to use laser jet prints. Inkjet prints won't work with this method. If you don't have a laser printer at home, you can always have your prints made fairly inexpensively at Kinkos or Staples.

Next, apply the gel medium to the front of your prints and apply it image side down to the wood. This will allow the print to adhere to the wood's surface.

Once you apply all of your prints, you let it dry for two days. After testing, Cory determined that a two-day drying time is the right amount of time to get the best result.

Two days later, Cory soaked a bunch of paper towels down with water and completely covered the paper surface. You want the paper to get as wet as possible so that it will rub off easily.

Here's the fun part! Once the paper is nice and soggy, Cory started rubbing the paper away to reveal the image.

We discovered that it is much easier to remove the paper if you use a wet cloth. A terry cloth towel would most likely rub away too much of the image. The cloth we used was a polyester blend which was gentler to Cory's design.

Here is the sign after rubbing away all of the paper. At this stage in the process, Cory went through and purposefully distressed the sign further to show the damage of floods on materials.

To enhance the contrast of the letters against the blue background, Cory cut his own stencils and hand-painted each letter.

Here's the final sign, ready to be cut out and hung in the exhibit. What do you think of the process and the result? Are you interested in trying this at home?

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Sarah Anderson is the exhibit designer for IHS. Sarah is a TEDTalk loving, digital artist with a passion for design thinking.

Mocking up an Exhibit

Sarah Anderson — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 12:00:00 -0500

In Exhibitions Design, we like to make to-scale paper copies before moving to the more expensive materials.

Tabitha Cravens is one of our very talented Design Interns. She graduated from Herron School of Art and Design with a BFA in Visual Communications.

She is currently working hard on an exhibit that we are developing for the Athenaeum Foundation. This exhibit is going to be constructed out of aluminum, PVC and acrylic panels, each one offset off the wall to create depth and visual interest.

Using paper and board, Tabitha is experimenting with the distance each panel will float from the wall. Using cheap materials in this process keeps her work very freeform and easy to change. This will ensure that the final result is well thought out.

We install in two months! More updates to come on this lovely exhibit.

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Sarah Anderson is the exhibit designer for IHS. Sarah is a TEDTalk loving, digital artist with a passion for design thinking.

A Sneak Peek Into Our Design Studio

Sarah Anderson — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 14:00:00 -0500

At the beginning of the new year, the Exhibition's department rearranged our areas to better encourage collaboration and brainstorming. Over a span of two weeks, we transformed our exhibit storage area into the brand new design studio. Shelves were moved, past exhibit props were organized and all of the design equipment was moved in.

It is my opinion that our new space rivals any Murphy Building or Stutz studio; it has concrete floors and exposed duct work that many designers would drool over. We made it our goal to not spend a dime and only use repurposed materials to outfit our new studio.

Our Fabricator, Roger, built this beautiful workstation for our design interns. Using flooring that was once in the Violin Maker Upstairs "You Are There" exhibit, he sanded the wood smooth and applied many coats of varnish to make it shine. He wrapped the desk in recycled metal and hung it with steel cables from the ceiling. It's beautiful and large, everything you could want in a workstation.

Our meeting table was also handmade by Roger. He welded a steel base for two vintage doors, a glass top finishes it off so it can be functional for meetings. It's the first thing people comment on when they visit the space.

I was given the freedom to make my personal work area my own and I took full advantage. I feel that in order to be creative, it helps quite a bit if you are surrounded by objects and images that inspire you. As the exhibit designer, I provide art direction for each exhibit and work with Exhibitions Research and Development and other departments to make sure our exhibit design solutions are well thought out and purposeful. We want to make history come alive for our visitors.

I run a team of four Graphic Design interns from various art schools around the city. Currently, we have two Visual Communication majors from right across the park at Herron School of Art and two Graphic Design majors from the Art Institute of Indianapolis. This team already has a great chemistry and maybe the new studio space has something to do with that. It is organized in such a way that impromptu brainstorm sessions occur frequently and we can share our work and ideas easily with one another. We are currently working on many exciting projects. I will share our process with you in entries to come!

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Sarah Anderson is the exhibit designer for IHS. Sarah is a TEDTalk loving, digital artist with a passion for design thinking.

Thinking About Our Relationship with Water

Eloise Batic — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 12:16:43 -0400

Next spring, the Indiana Historical Society will be one of many organizations commemorating the “Great Flood of 1913” that affected cities and towns throughout the Midwest and the Ohio River Valley. Over the Easter holiday weekend in 1913, the area received between six and 12 inches of rainfall over a five-day period that added to an already saturated ground and filled rivers to the brim. As the levees broke, flood waters gushed into Indianapolis neighborhoods and buildings, killing 11, and affecting thousands.

As we uncover the complexity of this story, we are thrilled to work with members of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as well as historians and specialists in the field of environmental and urban history. We are guided by Dr. Phil Scarpino of IUPUI to make sure that our visitors do not leave the exhibit thinking that rain alone is what causes a flood, rather, that floods are the result of human choices and decisions to interact in particular ways with their environment. In Indianapolis, early settlers focused on making the landscape fit the needs of business and settlement, and in the process took away the ability of natural resources to do their jobs. By cutting down trees along the river and throughout towns, the settlers took away the land’s ability to absorb rainwater. People built homes, businesses and farms upon what had historically been a floodplain.

In addition, the 1913 floodwaters were filled with sewage and waste from surrounding areas. On the cusp of major breakthroughs in germ theory, and on the eve of a public health crisis that would ultimately lead to drastic improvements, those unfortunate to find themselves in the flood’s path were buried in water that would horrify those concerned with water cleanliness today.

Visitors to the Indiana Historical Society’s ninth You Are There experience will enter Wulf’s Hall Relief station on Monday, March 31, 1913, set up to help flood sufferers on the west side of downtown six days after the White River levee failed. They will hear the tales of the flood’s impact and help assemble supplies for those in need. It will be nearly impossible to go through this experience without thinking about the floods that continue to make headlines today and to wish that we could somehow find a way to prevent them. There are important lessons to be learned from the causes of 1913’s massive flood that might help shape discourse about land use and flood prevention today. We hope that you will visit us when this experience opens on March 26, 1913, and help us bring the past to life.

Also, IHS is one of the finalists in the “IPL Golden Eagle Environmental Grants” campaign on WIBC 93.1. We have already earned a $1,000 grant from IPL to help us develop You Are There 1913: A City Under Water, which addresses the environmental effects of local flooding. Please vote for us today at www.wibc.com/IPLGoldenEagle and we could win $10,000 for this important project.

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Pshew! We did it!

Eloise Batic — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 09:24:36 -0400

The exhibitions staff at the Indiana Historical Society is breathing a collective sigh of relief, having recently opened to the public its newest You Are There offering that recreates a wonderful moment in Indiana (and national) history: the discovery and distribution of the polio vaccine.

Bringing to life a scene of workers at Eli Lilly and Company packing up the newly discovered but not yet approved polio vaccine at Building 314 on the Lilly campus, we invite visitors to be a part of the action and help workers prep the vaccine for shipment to an eagerly awaiting public.

The exhibits team grew by leaps and bounds during the course of this project, welcoming graphic design interns Jamie Goldsborough, Amy Burres, Corey Venable and Tabitha Cravens; motion graphics specialist Aaron Gallimore; plus John Fish, a conveyor belt engineer enlisted for help creating the exhibit centerpiece. An adjacent content room explores the larger story of polio, including existing treatments, the science behind the vaccine, and the production process that occurred at Lilly.

With some very special objects loaned for display, this exhibition is one of the richest yet. We hope you will visit and share your stories about this momentous time in our history. This exhibition will be open through Sept. 14, 2013.

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Faces of the Exhibits Team

Eloise Batic — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:35:00 -0400

Why is it so quiet today in Exhibits Design and Prep? This week, more than half of the exhibits team is off enjoying a well-deserved spring break (as is the rest of the IUPUI campus), and boy do we miss them.

For anyone who has visited the History Center in the past two years, it should come as no shock that there is a large team of people who help bring the You Are There spaces to life (not to mention, develop the many other exhibit offerings both in the building and as a part of our traveling exhibitions program). Without out interns, none of these projects would be possible.

I would like to take this opportunity to recognize the amazing work of Angela Giacomelli, a third-year graduate student who will complete her master's degree in public history this summer, without whom the Prohibition Enforced and Making a Jewish Home exhibits would not have happened. Krystal Gladden, also from the IUPUI graduate public history program, is the exhibits official graduate intern this year and has already made her mark on the Toys of the 1950s and 1960s exhibit and the upcoming Spirit of Competition traveling show. Abby Wolf, a work-study student with us from the IUPUI museum studies master's program, will graduate this coming May after having spent almost a year working on the upcoming polio vaccine You Are There, and who has been a lifesaver on too many graphics-related projects to name. And lastly, our newest addition, Maggie Schmidt, comes to us from the IUPUI museum studies graduate program as well, and in her short time with us, has had a significant role on the team behind this fall’s You Are There experience recreating an African-American doctor’s office from the 1940s.

When you visit the History Center, take a moment to notice the fruits of their labor by paying attention to the details in our various exhibit offerings. We are so grateful for their hard work!

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Just a Stove

Eloise Batic — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 16:10:00 -0400

These days, the exhibitions staff is hard at work on the next You Are There project, recreating a photograph of Fannie Kaplan cooking in her kitchen on the south side of Indianapolis. This photograph, part of the Jewish Welfare Federation Collection in the Indiana Historical Society library, shows Mrs. Kaplan, whose family has just moved to their new home in Indianapolis after surviving the Holocaust and spending time in a displaced persons camp in Germany. Although she brings with her an amazingly complex story of survival, family and the challenges of establishing a new life in a new place, what the image actually shows is nothing more than Mrs. Kaplan dishing up the soup that she is cooking on her stove.

For those familiar with the You Are There projects, our challenge is to literally re-create historical photographs into a three-dimensional space. For what at first glance would be a relatively simple task – this particular photograph contains fewer than 10 items – the task of finding the stove itself has proved an almost insurmountable challenge. Although we have had multiple staff members and a host of outside advisers offering suggestions on what the stove might be, we have yet to determine with certainty the make and model of the stove in the photograph. Every identifiable component (timer, salt-and-pepper shakers, etc.) seems to rule out any possible option for the stove’s identity, which seems to defy categorization into any typical or commercially available model.

After extensive searching, we have found as close a match as possible and are currently in the process of retrieving it out of a basement in a Kentucky home – no easy task itself. Once it is here, we'll have to retrofit the stove with all of those individual pieces that make the item so unique. Just like the story behind the photograph, what on first glance appeared to be a simple image of an ordinary stove, has proven to be a complex research task of finding this incredibly unique object. Visit the History Center to see the fruits of this labor when You Are There 1950: Making a Jewish Home opens to the public on Oct. 11.

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From 2x4s to MLK Day

Guest Blogger — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 12:10:00 -0500

I used to believe that all a job took was passion. As long as I found a job I loved doing, then the rest of the work would do itself. But after two quick weeks at the Indiana Historical Society working as an intern, I can’t believe how naive that idea was. Just looking past the coffee cups, cold medicine and smiles, I began to understand how much effort is really given into doing a job correctly, even when the passion is still there.

The first day I arrived ready for anything, or so I thought. It turns out high heels aren’t the best thing to wear when doing deconstruction work. But days two and three of the deconstruction work went much smoother for me. Inventory, dry wall, and 2x4s became part of my daily routine. Everyone at IHS had put in a great effort to build the 1945 grocery store, and now had to watch it be torn down so that a new exhibit could take its place.

The last two days of that week I spent in the Marketing and Public Relations Department assisting where I could with sorting out advertisements, sitting in on meetings and looking through requests from organizations asking for donations so that IHS could send tickets and books. Also, I was given a few different tours through the Conservation Lab, the library and the vault.

My final week was spent with the Interpretation Department following facilitators and watching interpreters interact with museum guests. There were so many different rooms to be in ranging from the fancy Cole Porter Room, to the 1914 violin shop, to Destination Indiana, to the History Lab. Friday morning, I even tagged along to a radio interview as Amy Lamb promoted Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

When Martin Luther King Jr. Day finally came around, so did the guests. People poured into the doors ready for all the available activities the museum has to offer. I assisted in putting on wristbands and directed people as to where things were located.

I have had a great experience interning at the Indiana Historical Society and would strongly encourage other interns to come. There were so many people available and willing to speak with me about their own personal experiences with their jobs, and specifically about IHS.

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Alicia Creasey is a junior at Covenant Christian High School in Indianapolis and completed her school’s “J-Term” internship with the IHS. She enjoys reading, creative writing, theater and spending time with family and friends.

It Takes a Village

Eloise Batic — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 10:41:25 -0500

: Landmark for Peace memorial at Martin Luther King Jr. Park in Indianapolis

When the next You Are There experience opens to the public on Feb. 22, 2011, visitors will have the opportunity to step back in time through an Indiana Historical Society photograph and into the night Robert Kennedy announced the death of Martin Luther King Jr. to a stunned crowd. This entire project could not have happened without the help of key partner institutions throughout Indianapolis and beyond, and we hope that the result will leave a lasting impression on our guests.

In the King/Kennedy Legacy Room, a space visitors will enter following the conclusion of the speech, visitors will encounter text and graphics, video and both a physical and computer interactive that will put the speech in its historical context. The video clips that help reconstruct the stories of the 1960s in general and April 4, 1968 in specific, come to us via the generosity of Don Boggs at Covenant Productions, who amassed a treasure trove of resources during the production of his award-winning documentary, A Ripple of Hope. Jim Walker at Big Car Gallery is helping to develop a visitor-created conversation/art-piece where we invite those just leaving the speech to record their gut reactions and to build off the comments left by others. Prior to leaving the experience, guests will engage with a touchscreen computer interactive that illustrates the power of words using both historical images and modern-day examples created with the help of the Indianapolis Star. At the conclusion of this interactive, guests are invited to take a pledge to use their words in positive ways and are then connected to the ongoing work of the Peace Learning Center and the International Faith Initiative to put what they have learned into action.

This list does not include the many other individuals and institutions who have supported this project, including financial contributors, scholars, community members, the staff at the Landmark for Peace Memorial and the technical experts involved in what visitors will soon see, but this list of partners is a testament to the ways that the words of both Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy can continue to bring groups together who have a shared desire to do good work. Whether through the documentation, collection or interpretation of our history, or through encouragements to express ideas, challenge the ills that still plague our society, or join the effort to enact positive change, this exhibit project is a shining examples of how history can teach and inspire us in very real ways.

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Setting the Stage for Robert F. Kennedy

Eloise Batic — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 11:58:53 -0500

In order to recreate the speech that Robert Kennedy gave in Indianapolis on April 4, 1968 for the upcoming You Are There experience at the History Center, the exhibits team not only brings to life the stories of that night through the interpreters, films, graphic panels and computer interactives, but they also must recreate the physical space in which the speech occurred. To do this, Jeff Mills, director of exhibits design and production, began by developing schematics that combine all the elements required for this particular You Are There. This includes not only a King/Kennedy Legacy Room where visitors will learn the context of that night, but a literal recreation of the park itself.

In order to put our Robert Kennedy speech in its physical context (look for future updates on that exciting technology!), Exhibits Fabricator Roger Fish set to work locating a truck that could be used to replicate the one on which Kennedy stood that night. After an extensive search, he found an appropriate truck through an equipment dealer based in Bloomington. He then had the truck delivered to a place suitable for the prep work required to fit the truck into the gallery layout, namely, the truck had to be cut in half.

IHS member Sarah Rector generously allowed us to use her pole barn to dismantle the truck into several pieces, and then reassemble it as a half of a flatbed truck. It might sound like an easy thing, to saw a truck in half, but it is hardly that simple. The truck had to be dismantled piece by piece in order to prevent it from falling in on itself. Roger and Exhibits Graphics Coordinator Martin Douglas stripped the truck down to its bare frame, cut the center out of the frame, then reattached the frame pieces to a 50-percent dimension of the original truck. As Roger says about this project, “It was a lot of fun!”

There are a lot of bells and whistles that will no doubt leave an impression for visitors to the You Are There 1968: Robert F. Kennedy Speaks experience, opening in February 2011, but the exhibits department encourages visitors to look closely at the details. Everything that goes into a You Are There experience is its own unique project, and sometimes we make it look easy when it was anything but!

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The Mysteries of History

Eloise Batic — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 14:00:00 -0400

Sometimes the work of a history researcher can be a wonderful journey of finding clues and solving mysteries. However, sometimes it can be just the opposite. There are times when the clues just don’t add up and the pieces do not fall into place with ease. Such has been the case with a recent project that the exhibits staff has been invested in for some time now, involving the incredibly rich history of the Lakeview Home near Monticello.

For an upcoming You Are There experience, the exhibits team was planning to recreate an image of a woman baking bread in what we believed to be the kitchen of the Lakeview Home (the county poor farm) in White County. The image was rich and deep, and the story behind it even more so. The team made several trips up to the home, investigating details of the kitchen space, the living quarters, the basements, attic and grounds, as well as records held by the White County Historical Society that shed light on the lives of those who had lived and worked in the home. We felt connected to this story and loved the opportunities for interaction, conversation and historical interpretation that this photograph provided.

However, in the end, key elements of the photograph (windows, doors, etc.) just did not match up to the building itself. We could not confirm with certainty that the image had been taken in that very kitchen, nor could we identify the woman baking bread. After running ads in the local paper and historical society newspaper and following every lead that came our way, we had to finally accept that we could not confirm enough details to make this project happen. We encourage people to look into the history of the Lakeview Home ... it is rich with the stories we love so much about Indiana history and those who bring it to life!

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	Eloise Scroggins is the director of exhibitions research and development at the IHS. She believes that telling a good story involves not only solid research and impeccable design, but most importantly, a good sense of humor and a playful imagination.

Summertime Past

Eloise Batic — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 11:39:51 -0400

: Carolyn East enjoys cotton candy at the 1933 Indiana State Fair in an image from our J.C. Allen Collection.

So many things go on at the History Center during the summer months, including Concerts on the Canal, beautiful outdoor dining at the Stardust Terrace Café, a menu of programs and events, and all the hustle and bustle along the canal and downtown streets.

In addition to all the wonderful activities taking place, one little thing visitors should seek out is a changing panel on the Mezzanine Level of Lilly Hall. For those who have not yet been downtown to see the new Indiana Experience, Lilly Hall – the centerpiece of the IHS’s incredible

: This photo from our O. James Fox Collection is dated 1945 to 1960.

headquarters building – has been transformed into a dynamic exhibition space complete with the stories of the Northwest Territory, Indiana’s immigrant past, various explanations for the term ‘Hoosier,’ and a rotating series of panels exploring the various seasons and how Hoosiers experience them.

Come to the History Center and see wonderful images of summertime-past from our collection, little-seen gems of families at the Indiana State Fair, the first swimming pool in Indianapolis, Fourth of July celebrations from as early as 1905, and much, much more. From our collection of more than 1.5 million photographs, we are excited for yet another way to highlight even more treasures in our collection.

Come back in September to see what stories we uncover as we explore autumn in Indiana.

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