Outdoor photography exhibits as public art and public history

I was going through a recent NYT, and came across an article/photo essay on the Ghosts of Segregation photography project by Richard Frishman.  He records elements of the built environment that were created to facilitate and maintain segregation, such as "colored doors," separate entries to cinemas and other places.

Negro League baseball games took place at Hamtramck Stadium in Hamtramck Michigan.   

Two of the photos featured in the Times online article were from the Detroit area, where I grew up, and were about area history that I knew nothing about.  

Similarly, years ago I read an obituary in the Times about the prominent educator Jewel Cobb, and I learned from it that for more than 100 years, the University of Michigan campus didn't even allow African-Americans to stay in dorms.  That's not something I ever learned during the many years I was in Ann Arbor.

My Budapest Photo Project, displayed in Madách Square, Budapest.

Earlier in the day, looking up images for Madách Square in Budapest (also because it was featured in a photo published in the Times), I came across a story about a public photo exhibit last year in Madách Square, about the city from the perspective of the homeless ("My Budapest Photo Project: The Capital Through the Eyes of Homeless People," Hungary Today).

Salt Lake City has a public art project called the Temporary Museum of Permanent Change, which has stands placed on the sidewalk-facing perimeter of some parking lots along 200 South in the Downtown.  

The displays change frequently and may touch on current issues in the community like development and land use, public events of great import, activism, etc.

This is easily adaptable to other places.

There's another project in Salt Lake right now, placing public art on vacant lots, buildings, and a recycling dumpster in a local park ("This outdoor art project adds vibrancy to overlooked parts of Salt Lake City," Salt Lake Tribune).  

Reading that article, before I came across the Frishman or Budapest projects, I was thinking how these kinds of exhibits need to be placed not just in derelict places or temporarily in large, centrally located places like Madách Square, but in neighborhood parks and squares, libraries should have rotating exhibits*, etc. ("Radio Chipstone: How a Museum Represents Its Community," WUVM/NPR).

I remember such an exhibit on the Liverpool Waterfront, although I can't find my photos.

1000 Families by Uwe Ommer, presented in Chicago, 2004

Chazen Museum, Madison, Wisconsin: exhibit of photographs by Kay Chernush on human trafficking.

In Baltimore, the Walthers Museum had a program of displaying copies of paintings in its collection, outdoors, across Baltimore and Howard County ("Walters Art Museum goes off the wall," Baltimore Sun).

Walters Museum spokesman Matt Fry tells why the sturdy replica of "Attack at Dawn" was placed on top of Baltimore's Federal Hill. The outdoor exhibit called "Off the Wall," is designed to make art more approachable.  Photo: Janet Podolak, News-Herald, Ohio.

Salt Lake's Parks and Public Lands agency is very good about including permanent historic and park interpretation signs in most of the city's parks, which provide teaching moments about history, landscape, flora and fauna, and the environmenet.

These are important things to learn about.  Every city should have a traveling public exhibit about civil rights in their community, etc.

Otherwise, people are able to avoid confronting or acknowledging the reality of history, especially with civil rights and segregation (which is sadly apparent when you read the comment thread on an article like this one, "Too many of D.C.’s youth are victims of violence — or causing it. We have to help them all," from the Washington Post).

With regard to library exhibits, DC Public Library and Anacostia Community Museum did do a project where the ACM created smaller exhibits for libraries serving neighborhoods featured in the exhibit, "A Right to the City."

But the parent exhibit was so good, that the much smaller neighborhood presentations were disappointing, at least to me, because they were so abbreviated.  Still, it provided the opportunity to learn more and hopefully led to some people visiting the parent exhibit.

But more generally, I argue that neighborhood libraries should be repositioned in part as cultural centers with regular exhibit programs ("Update: Neighborhood libraries as nodes in a neighborhood and city-wide network of cultural assets").

Ride!Philadelphia cultural interpretation board in a bus shelter. 

Relatedly, transportation systems should provide exhibits on transit history within bus shelters, transit stations, etc.

Over the years, I've come across such displays around the country.

Ride!Philadelphia was a program that did that in Philadelphia, placing historical displays in bus shelters (information sheet).  Actually, what they did is create area maps, and therefore had a blank side on the back, which they used to present transit history.  

I've seen transit history information posted in vehicles in San Francisco (the streetcars) and Portland, and at transit stops, such as in Walla Walla, Washington or a historical trolley waiting station in Baltimore.  

I can't find a photo, but there is a nice cultural interpretation sign outside the Queen Street bus station in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  Some of DC's Cultural Trails feature signboards with transit history also.

There is a traveling exhibit based on the book Terminal Town, about the various transit terminal buildings and structures in Chicago, that I saw displayed in Chicago's Union Station.  

But it has been displayed in public buildings across Chicago, such as at the Thompson Government Building.

Folks walking through the James R. Thompson Center in downtown Chicago Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2014, pause to view the “Terminal Town: Celebrating 75 Years of Travel to the Windy City,” exhibit on display. DePaul University’s Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development is launching a six-month community program to explore Chicago’s history and future as the epicenter of U.S. passenger transportation. “Terminal Town: Celebrating 75 Years of Travel to the Windy City,” opens a traveling exhibit Sept. 1-5 at the James R. Thompson Center, 100 W. Randolph St., and continues through the fall with tours, events and a new 300-page illustrated guide by transportation expert Joseph Schwieterman. (DePaul University/Jamie Moncrief)