Museum on Main Street (MoMS), a partnership with the Smithsonian Institution, offers high-quality traveling exhibitions to small museums, libraries, and historical societies in Illinois towns with populations of 30,000 or less, or by invitation.
MoMS combines the prestige of Smithsonian exhibitions, the program expertise of state humanities councils, and the remarkable volunteerism and unique histories of rural communities to produce novel ventures in the public humanities. Exhibitions developed by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) rarely travel to locations that MoMS can reach. Moreover, through the Illinois Humanities Council, select communities build the capacity to develop and deliver first-rate public programs.
MoMS serves rural communities by circulating Smithsonian exhibitions that focus on broad topics relating to national history. The Illinois Humanities Council helps small museums and historical societies prepare exhibition-related events for and about their communities. The museum benefits from the project's professional training in volunteerism, exhibition development, fundraising, marketing, and interpretation of local history. Through these combined resources, Museum on Main Street sparks lasting professional improvement for small town cultural organizations.
The IHC will begin the tour of Between Fences in October 2008, Journey Stories in May 2009, and New Harmonies in April 2010. Please visit the "Events/Activities" section on page to see when and where you can view these exciting exhibitions.
Between Fences Touring Schedule 
"Between Fences" Exhibit in Pinckneyville
- Pinckneyville: October 16, 2008 - November 23, 2008
- Byron: November 29, 2008 - January 11, 2009
- Clinton: January 17, 2009 - March 1, 2009
- Princeton: March 7, 2009 - April 19, 2009
- Arcola: April 25, 2009 - June 7, 2009
- Lockport: June 13, 2009 - July 26, 2009
We live between fences. We may hardly notice them, but they are dominant features in our lives and in our history. Built of hedge, concrete, wood and metal, fences skirt our properties and are central to the American landscape. We use them to enclose our houses and neighborhoods. They are decorative structures that are as much part of the landscape as trees and flowers. Industry and agriculture without fences would be difficult to imagine. Private ownership of land would be an abstract concept. But fences are more than functional objects. They are powerful symbols. The way we define ourselves as individuals and as a nation becomes concrete in how we build fences. Through an examination of boundaries, place, and space, Between Fences will explore how neighbors and nations divide, protect, offend, and defend through the boundaries they build.
Journey Stories Touring Schedule
- Sycamore: May 30, 2009 - July 11, 2009
- Mt. Carmel: July 18, 2009 - August 30, 2009
- Lincoln: September 15, 2009 - October 18, 2009
- Mascoutah: October 24, 2009 - December 6, 2009
- Hampton: December 12, 2009 - January 24, 2010
- Monmouth: January 30, 2010 - March 14, 2010
Journey Stories tells how we and our ancestors came to America. From Native Americans to new American citizens and regardless of our ethnic or racial background, everyone has a story to tell. Our history is filled with stories of people leaving behind everything – families and possessions – to reach a new life in another state, across the continent, or even across an ocean. Many chose to move, searching for something better in a new land. Others had no choice, like enslaved Africans captured and relocated to a strange land and bravely asserting their own cultures, or like Native Americans already here, who were often violently removed by newcomers.
New Harmonies (accepting applications in January 2009; touring Illinois in 2010)
New Harmonies is a cultural history of America's musical landscape. It's the story of a diverse mix of people interacting with theNew World, a world where cultures and customs met, mixed, and mingled and created new sounds. The distinct cultural identities of all of 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. This exhibition 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 multimedia 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 rock and hip-hop.
