A Road Scholar Program by Antonio Delgado

This program visually depicts Chicago's rich and vibrant history of Mexican presence dating back to World War I. Today, Chicago has the second-largest Mexican population in the U.S. The audience will learn about the highly personal nature of immigration and its impact on the development and growth of Chicago. Early Mexican Chicago reflects U.S./Mexican relations, immigration law/policies, and the forces that bind two nations together. Learning about Mexican immigrant contributions will foster a greater appreciation and understanding of the Latino family, community, and its place in US society. It makes sense to know your neighbors. This program, available in either Power Point or slide projector formats, is suitable for general audiences and middle school through college students. The presenter is bilingual.

The New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music exhibit is a cultural history of America's Musical Landscape. It's the story of a diverse mix of people interacting with the New World, a world where cultures and customs met, mixed, and mingled to create new sounds. The distinct cultural identities of all these peoples are carried in song - both sacred and secular - and the music that emerges is known by names like blues, country, western, folk, and gospel.

New Harmonies tracks the unique history of many peoples reshaping each other into one incredibly diverse and complex people - Americans. It also promises a fascinating, inspiring, and toe-tapping listen to the American story of cultural exchange with its multi-media components. As a unique traveling exhibition, it is full of surprises about familiar songs, histories of instruments, the roles of religion and technology in shaping new sounds, and the continuity of musical roots from the colonial period to modern day punk and hip-hop.

New Harmonies will display from April 10, 2010 through May 23, 2010.

A Road Scholar Program by Dennis Stroughmatt

The first European culture to establish roots in Illinois, French Creoles along the Illinois, Wabash, and Mississippi Rivers would in many places be supplanted by later Anglo and German American settlers. Instrumental in winning Illinois for the United States during the American Revolution and important to the success of the Lewis and Clark expedition, Illinois Creoles have a strong cultural history that opens a door to their effect in the Midwest. This presentation will explore what brought the French here, their fiddle music, a few of their exploits, and their lasting influence on the Illinois Country.