LEWISTON, Idaho – A Smithsonian traveling exhibit focusing on rural America called “Crossroads: Change in Rural American” will visit six Idaho communities, including Lewiston at the Lewis-Clark State College Center for Arts & History.
The exhibit will be at the Center on Jan. 17-Feb. 28 in 2020 and will be the fourth stop in Idaho. The traveling exhibit will start in Moscow on Aug. 23-Oct 4 at the Latah County Historical Society and then will be in Burley and Salmon before coming to Lewiston. The final two stops will be in Rexburg and Nampa.
While on display, each community will develop local programming, ranging from local exhibits and school displays to lectures, films, panel discussions, and other activities. Officials at the LCSC Center for Arts & History are in current discussions with partners from the Port of Lewiston, Port of Clarkston, Clearwater Economic Development Council, Nez Perce County Historical Society, regional museums, the Lewiston City Library, Beautiful Downtown Lewiston, and the University of Idaho extension office to plan the local component for Lewiston.
The traveling exhibit will give small towns a chance to look at their history that helped shape where they are today. In 1900, about 40 percent of the United States population lived in rural areas. With the economic and social change that followed for more than a century, that number had fallen to less than 18 percent, even though less than 10 percent of the U.S. land mass is considered urban
The exhibit is part of the Smithsonian's "Museum on Main Street" program, an exhibition program that was developed to bring exhibitions primarily to smaller communities in America that would not ordinarily have the opportunity to host such an exhibit.
The LCSC Center for Arts & History was chosen as one of six host sites through an application process with the Idaho Humanities Council, which works with the Smithsonian Institution’s “Museum on Main Street” program to bring Smithsonian traveling exhibitions to small Idaho communities each year.
For more information on the LCSC Center for Arts & History visit www.lcsc.edu/cah.