Hyrum City Museum curator Courtney Cochley, museum director Jami Van Huss and Megan von Frank from Utah Humanities at exhibit grand opening

HYRUM — Recently the Hyrum Museum and Bear River Heritage Area were recipients of the Award of Excellence from the American Association for State and Local History(AASLH) for “H2O Today”, a project that encompassed seven rural counties in northern Utah and southeastern Idaho from  January 2021 to February 2022.

The project was part of Utah Humanities’ “Think Water Utah” project. On a recent KVNU For the People program, museum director Jami Van Huss said the project started out small.

“Originally, we were just going to have the main Smithsonian exhibit H2O Today at the museum for about seven weeks, but because things changed and timelines got pushed and the contract got extended, we were able to host it for six full months. So, it was amazing to have a Smithsonian exhibit that long, that’s just unheard of. And then with all that extra time to plan we also were able to bring in almost forty partners,” explained Van Huss.

She said the project itself involved over a dozen exhibits at upwards of twenty different locations. They had a couple dozen different programs, everything from lectures, presentations to art exhibits and library programs.

Our final numbers showed we reached an audience of over about 11,000 people throughout the different activities we offered. It ended up being much bigger than we kind of anticipated, but it was a really wonderful project and, coming out of the pandemic, I think it ended up just being a really great way to engage the community.”

Van Huss praised Utah Humanities, saying they provide wonderful professional development, support, resources and quite a bit of funding.

“For instance, us at the Hyrum Museum, the Stokes Nature Center, over at the Brigham City museum, Cache D.U.P. museum, a lot of the really beautiful exhibits that are there now were partially funded through this money, along with some mentorship and help developing the interpretive exhibits too.”

Hyrum museum staff members, including Van Huss, will be traveling to Buffalo, New York to the AASLH national conference in September to receive the award.

 

:



Source link