Travelling Exhibits Come to Blaine County Museum

Blaine County Museum Director, Samantha French announced last week that the museum lobby is playing host to a travelling exhibit on loan from the Carter County Museum in Ekalaka. This exhibit, which opened in Chinook on March 18, will be on display at the museum through April 29 during regular business hours. French encourages residents, including teachers and their students, to take a tour.

Called "Shots Felt 'Round the World: Maurice Hilleman and the Montana Origins of the Fight against Pandemics," the exhibit highlights the life and work of microbiologist Dr. Maurice Hilleman. Educated as an undergraduate at Montana State College, now MSU-Bozeman, Hilleman is credited with creating over 40 vaccines.

To make room for this exhibit, the Blaine County Museum (BCM) Board agreed in January to retire most of the Sweet Collection to storage. According to French, those archives had been on display in the museum lobby since at least the 1980s. French envisions that this space will now be dedicated to travelling and/or temporary exhibits.

Two of the panels in the exhibit: Infectious Disease in Blaine County and Healthcare in Blaine County were developed by French herself. Using the archives in the BCM, French researched and wrote the material that chronicles the area's challenges with infectious disease and memorializes some of the healthcare professionals of the past.

While the Hilleman exhibit is in Chinook, French encourages local schools to book with her to bring their classes through for a tour. Although French believes high school students could navigate the exhibit independently, she would be happy to guide them through the material as well. French added, "The exhibit easily lends itself to K-12 social studies curriculum, so any class is welcome."

Carter County Museum Director, Sabre Moore shared details about the travelling exhibit. In 2020, the exhibition was designed and produced using collections donated to the Museum of the Rockies by the Hilleman family. Additional materials were curated from Montana newspaper stories that describe contemporary accounts of infectious disease throughout Montana history.

"The exhibit invites visitors to discover the process of scientific inquiry and vaccine development through the inspiring life of Dr. Maurice Hilleman, who was born in Miles City and laid the foundation for the modern fight against pandemic disease," Moore stated.

Hilleman's work provides evidence that our actions-while some of them may be unknown, unseen, and unpredictable-can have far-reaching implications and consequences.

Although the display opened in Ekalaka in 2021, it is currently touring Montana because of a grant program offered through Humanities Montana. Funds from a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan (SHARP) grant is making this historical information more widely accessible.

On the heels of the Hilleman exhibit, the museum will be hosting "Blackfeet Indian Tipis: Design and Legend." This Blackfeet exhibit consists of a selection of silkscreen plates from the original portfolio of twenty-six tipis that were observed at the encampments of the Blackfeet or Blood Reserves in 1944 or 1945, at the time of the annual Sun Dance in early July. In producing this collection, every effort was made to capture the tipis as they were in the mid-1940s when the original data was collected.

The Blackfeet Indian Tipis: Design and Legend Project was started by Olga Ross Hannon in 1944. Under the direction of Hannon and with assistance from Jessie Wilbur, the Project continued in 1945. It was revived and completed for the Museum of the Rockies in 1974-1976 when the tipi prints and the associated Blackfeet stories, which were recorded by Cecile Black Boy in the 1940s, were assembled in an exhibit format. The preservation of this history occurred as a result of efforts made by the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman and was funded in part by a grant from the Montana Arts Council, an agency of State government.

Following that exhibit, which will be in Chinook through October, the Blaine County Museum hopes to display an exhibition curated from its own collection. While a theme has not yet been decided, French reported that the Board seems interested in doing an exhibit that highlights the history of each of the communities in Blaine County.

"We are so excited to have this new space and to be able to change things up on a regular basis," French exclaimed.