Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Movie premiere date!

Jim Gerren of Nightwine Productions has set the date for the World Premiere of the movie from this year's movie camp!

It will be held at Great Escapes Theater in Massillon on November 14 at 11:00 PM.

The cost is $5 per person.

We're VERY MUCH looking forward to the World Premiere of Star Wars: Battle of the McKinley Monument!!

Grand Opening photos

Click here to see photos of Saturday's Grand Opening of The Stark County Story!

We had more than 350 people come for the festivities. It was a great day! We are expecting a spike in attendance as people who couldn't make it to the opening come in to see this fabulous new exhibit!

(Facebook has been experiencing some technical difficulties today -- if the link doesn't work for you, please try again later! It took me three times to even upload these photos this morning!)

Monday, September 28, 2009

White Glove photos

I uploaded 76 PHOTOS of Friday night's White Glove Affair onto Facebook yesterday!

Click here to view them.

There are still more photos to come from Saturday's Grand Opening!

Friday, September 25, 2009

Fabulous party!!!!

Chris and I just got home from the fabulous, wonderul, fantastic White Glove Affair!

It was an amazing night.

Glenmoor's food was out of this world. There was a mashed potato and mashed sweet potato bar, amazing hors d'oeurves, a roast beef and turkey carving station, and cheese and fruit galore. All the food stations and the bar were in Discover World.

The chocolate and white chocolate fountains were up in the Keller Gallery, along with a coffee bar.

We had some impressive guests too! Congressman Regula, Ambassador Timken, the Keller family (for whom the gallery is named), and Quentin Alexander (Cornelius Aultman's great grandson). Gary Peck and TK Kleinert from Split Rock came too.

We all had so much fun, and just like Joyce said, it went by so fast!

Chris and I are too wired to sleep, but we have to get up early to come back and do it all over again tomorrow for the GRAND OPENING of the exhibit!!

Thank you to everyone who came tonight. Pics to follow, hopefully before the end of the weekend.

This is it!

Tonight is the White Glove Affair preview party of The Stark County Story and tomorrow is the GRAND OPENING!

Everything is DONE. I am going to do a walk-through this morning to make sure of it, but I'm pretty sure all the things on the punch list were taken care of. All of the audio and video material has been loaded up. Cases are all full of artifacts. We're READY!

This has been a long journey, and I have learned so much from this process. I usually work in foam core for 3-4 months, so learning about mounting a permanent exhibition has been extremely interesting.

It has been amazing to watch our ideas crystallize into panels and kiosks and room settings.

I am anxious to hear what our guests think of it!

I'm sure the festivities are going to be a lot of fun. And when everything is over, I am going to crash!

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

A New Day

I didn't sleep well last night (of course) so I am tired today.

But it is a new day, and the to-do list is long! I have posters to make before Friday, and a program to reconstruct. Plus we need to finish the exhibit today.

I am facing life without my external hard drive. May it RIP. (Unless of course the computer guys can get any data out of it, in which case I totally approve an autopsy!)

Today we are hosting 15 members of the media for a Press Day for The Stark County Story. I'm excited that so many people are interested in coming over to see it! That is a pretty good percentage of our media list.

So between now and 2:00 PM, I am going to have to get a bunch of things done!

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

CRASH

Today has not been a good day.

My external hard drive crashed this morning.

A few years ago my computer was running very slowly, so we got an external hard drive for me to store my files. I have two hard drives on my computer -- one for the database and one for programs.

I backed up selected files from the external drive onto the computer. What I really should have had was two external drives. Live and learn.

So I have SOME of my files, but not all of them. Including some very important files, such as the ones for the programs for this weekend's activities. And the 2010 Bridal Show list.

I'm sure there will be more as I go to get something and realize it's not there.

I guess I can live without most of it. But this has happened at the worst possible time, when I have so much I need to do to finish getting ready for the exhibit openings!

So today, I am feeling very sorry for myself. I'm glad that I managed to get all of the glass and china out of storage without any mishaps.

But I simply CANNOT believe my hard drive chose this week to crash.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Glass is finished!

The new glass is all installed and it looks FANTASTIC!



PROGRAM for September 26 Grand Opening!

In the Repository

Thank you to Gary Brown for covering our new exhibit so thoroughly!

Why is this lady 'Laffing?' Meyers Lake attraction is familiar artifact

McKinley museum's new permanent exhibit relates 'The Stark County Story'

Also, Julie Venneti was here on Saturday to capture the amazing vista of dozens of Corvettes from the Buckeye Corvette Club spelling out "5-0" in cars in front of the Monument. Click here to see photos!

It's been great to get so much publicity lately! We are so excited about everything that's going on here.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Fall tour with Gary Rivers

GARY RIVERS from My 101.7 will be here from 11:00 to 1:00 for the GRAND OPENING of The Stark County Story on Saturday September 26.

Click here for his entire fall tour list!

New glass panels



Right at this moment we are having glass etched with the Presidential seal installed in the railing on the steps and on the second floor!

These will be replaced.....



...with these!



And here's the first one!

We're now on FACEBOOK!

Become one of our fans on Facebook!

Just follow the links to the right on the blog to add us to your fan list. Stay up to date with all that's going on!

You can even post your own photos and comments.

We'd love to hear from you!

Soup at Six: "The McKinley Home"

Last night's SOLD OUT Soup at Six: "The McKinley Home" was a wonderful success! MANY THANKS to volunteer Judy Pocock for her fabulous presentation. What is amazing about her program is she does it without notes. Amazing.


Judy Pocock speaking about The McKinley Home


The room was full!


Volunteers working hard behind the scenes

Our next Soup at Six will be November 19, featuring "The Harter Mansion" by volunteer Dick Haldi. It is already HALF FULL, so if you'd like to attend call now! 330-455-7043

Thursday, September 17, 2009

An interview with the Laffing Lady!



Look for Gary Brown's story on The Laffing Lady in the Repository on Monday!!

An interesting 1960s donation

Board member Bob Leibensperger just donated this awesome "feeding table" from the 1960s!





A spot in the top of the table pops up to create a little seat for the child!

We are planning an exhibition called "Celebrate the Sixties!" in 2011 -- you will definitely see this artifact included!

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Tweaks

Yesterday afternoon I received a FedEx package from Split Rock with all the object labels in it!

So this morning we put all the object labels inside the cases. I added a few plexi risers in a few cases so everything wasn't just flat. It looks so much nicer now!

An installer is coming next week from Split Rock with the last of the larger items from our punch list. Emails have been flying back and forth between Ohio and Minnesota for over a week! There were lots of final details to complete.

We will be ready for our opening events on September 25 and 26! We are getting closer every day. It takes a long time to finalize details of a five year project.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Tune in to WHBC tomorrow morning!

I am going to be on WHBC tomorrow morning to do a "Bicentennial Moment" at 8:30 AM.

Tune in if you're around!

Thursday, September 10, 2009

New beehive in Discover World!



We now have a brand new beehive in Discover World!

AND the Queen is laying eggs! That's what you see in the honeycomb here:



Each compartment holds one egg.

Why not come down to Discover World and spend some time watching the bees? You might even see one hatch!

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Volunteer Enrichment

This morning is our annual Volunteer Enrichment event.

The main program will be a tour of The Stark County Story. The history docents will have a day of training with Chris in preparation for giving tours of the exhibit. He has spent the past two weeks working on the Docent Manual!

I'm excited to share the new exhibit with our volunteers! Many of them stopped upstairs to see the construction, but some will be seeing it for the first time.

This afternoon I will be working on some of the remaining issues we have to work out for Split Rock. The end is in sight!!

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Arrowheads!

**UPDATE**

Here's a photo of the finished case:



*********************************************

OK, it took me WAY LONGER to mount arrowheads in the new exhibit than I ever expected it would. But IT'S DONE.

I asked my new intern to bend 100 pins for me last week (thanks Sarah!) to mount 50 arrowheads (2 pins each) and I ran out 90 minutes into the project. That's how many arrowheads you can fit in one case. Tons.

My back and neck are killing me from the half bent over position I was in for hours today. But at least I can check that case off my list!

Friday, September 4, 2009

A Day in the Life of a Curator

One of my favorite things about my job is that no two days are the same. I have a variety of things to do, which means I'm never, ever bored!

Here is a sampling of what I did yesterday:
  • wrote 7 articles for the newsletter
  • wrote a press release about winning the Nickelodeon award
  • created a list of "talking points" for volunteers about the new exhibit
  • edited some radio commercial scripts
  • made 500 $1 off coupons for our volunteers to give to their friends
  • designed 3 newspaper ads
  • spoke to a lawyer about a bequest
  • returned phone calls for dollhouse drop-off appointments
  • made a list of artifacts in the new exhibit cases for Split Rock
  • showed my new intern how the collections database works
  • supervised the installation of some additional artifacts for the new exhibit
  • created a mount for arrowheads (that I now have to replicate 100 times!)
So, as you can see, my days are quite busy! But they go by fast.

Today I have a marketing meeting first thing this morning, and for the rest of the day I will be working on object label script for Split Rock. I need to have that finished before I go home for the three day weekend!

The Museum will be open this weekend but is closed on Monday for Labor Day.

Have a safe and happy holiday!