HISTORY EXHIBITS
Exhibits on state and local history are our bread ‘n’ butter. Here are three of our faves.
FROM FACTORY TO FIELD:
THE DREAM OF BASEBALL IN BIRMINGHAM
Birmingham's baseball memorabilia collectors are a passionate about their pastime, and they’re knowledgeable. (One member of this community even wrote a book on the subject.) But mounting an exhibit about baseball isn’t a matter of simply filling a room with your choice eBay finds. You need point of view. That’s where we come in. We developed an interpretive framework for From Factory to Field using Stephen Reiss’ landmark study, City Games. Suddenly, disparate items were telling a cohesive story, of migration and immigration, urbanization and assimilation. Visitors got it. The baseball collectors loved it.
"Working with Birmingham baseball memorabilia collectors and a team of scholars and designers, Phil Ratliff developed an exhibit around industrial league baseball teams. While the collectors were busy making discoveries, Phil shaped our interpretation and finalized the details of presentation. The baseball community loved the professional exhibit that we came up with."
- G. Lamar Smith,
Co-President, Society for American Baseball Research, Rickwood Field chapter
ALABAMA JUSTICE: THE CASES AND FACES THAT CHANGED A NATION
Researched by Dr. Steven Brown, Professor of Political Science at Auburn University, and designed by Backstory Educational Media, Alabama Justice began its tour of the state in January 2019 in celebration of Alabama's bicentennial.
Backstory began our collaboration with Dr. Brown in 2016. Getting behind his vision with interpretive and graphic design, image sourcing, and help with fundraising resulted in one of our most widely viewed exhibits to date.
TERMINAL STATION: BIRMINGHAM’S GREAT TEMPLE OF TRAVEL
For sixty years, Terminal Station stood as an icon of Birmingham’s boom years. But in 1969, with automobiles and jetliners as the favored mode of transportation, the station was demolished.
Vulcan Park and Museum contracted Backstory to create an exhibit in honor of the station’s proud history and in celebration of Alabama’s Bicentennial. Marvin Clemons’s The Great Temple of Travel: A Pictorial History of Birmingham’s Terminal Station provided the exhibit’s source material. Our budget was modest, but the results are anything but!
