Gordon Parks Museum receives humanities grant

The Gordon Parks Museum at Fort Scott Community College has been chosen as a partner site and grant recipient for the Kansas Humanities Council's "The Way We Worked" exhibit.

The Way We Worked is a Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition that explores the stories of America's workers and invites viewers to consider how the workplace and workforce have changed over time. Through photographs from the National Archives, audio and video clips and hands-on components, Kansans will discover how work makes America.

Stories of the American worker will be told by the 15 Kansas museums, historical societies and libraries, each contributing to a statewide conversation about work through oral histories, exhibitions, public programs and photo documentary projects, a news release said. The exhibit will travel to six Kansas towns from Oct. 12-June 23, 2013. In Southeast Kansas, the full exhibit will be at the Miners Hall Museum in Franklin from May 11-June 23, 2013.

The Gordon Parks Museum's partner grant of $1,900 will go toward creating a display that complements the traveling Smithsonian exhibit.

"Hopefully us being able to piggy-back off that will help bring people to the museum and help with the exhibit in general," FSCC spokeswoman Kathleen Hinrichs said.

Titled "A Day in the Life of Fort Scott's Working World," it will feature photos of Fort Scott residents at work on any given day. Photographers of all ages will be invited to take pictures for the project. Photographs, all taken within the span of a certain yet-to-be-selected day, will capture the essence of everyday working life in Fort Scott -- from workers preparing for the day to those carrying out the many tasks it takes to get the job done.

"We are grateful to the Kansas Humanities Council to receive this grant," Gordon Parks Museum Director Jill Warford said in the release. "They had so many good submissions for the Smithsonian exhibit and it could only travel to six cities, so they created these partnership grants for 15 other cities to be a part of this exhibit. Our exhibit will be ready to go when the Smithsonian exhibit comes to Franklin next May. It will be great because we are so close and we hope people go to see that exhibit and then come and see ours, too."

The Gordon Parks Museum will also host local historian Fred Campbell to talk about the Civilian Conservation Corps next spring and will show a PBS documentary on the subject. For more information on the grant or to be a photographer for the "Day in the Life" project, contact the museum at 223-2700, ext. 5850, or by email at gordonparkscenter@fortscott.edu.