Porter County Museum makes ‘Connections’
New permanent exhibit draws parallels between ‘paired’ artifacts
A vacuum-sealed package of crackers from
1991 supplied by NASA displayed next to a World War I water canteen from 1917 are both examples of food and water rations, but served their purpose for nutritional survival from a timeline distance of more than half a century.
And both items also share “connections” to Porter County history.
“It wasn’t easy to decide which of the pieces from our archives to select and feature for this new exhibit, but some, like the crackers and canteen, just seemed perfect to pair to compare and contrast,” said Kevin Pazour, executive director of the
Porter County Museum in Valparaiso.
Pazour worked with exhibit designer Jake Just to create Connections, a new permanent ongoing exhibit which opened Nov. 10, showcasing 25 unique and fascinating paired items, most of which previously had been carefully stored and cataloged in the museum archive awaiting a designated opportunity to introduce, or reintroduce, the artifacts to museum patrons.
The canteen had been owned by Albert A’Neals, of Porter County, who brought the German-made container back home with him after his military service in Europe during World War I. The package of crackers, perfectly intact without even a crack, displays a faded label with coding and a red stamp detailing they were intended for “training.”
The crackers from 1991 are courtesy of a donation from astronaut Mark N. Brown, age 70, who is a graduate of Valparaiso High School and Purdue University, and were acquired when he was preparing for his second space flight, a five-day mission in September 1991 with the crew aboard the orbiter Discovery.
“With our recent renovations and remodeling, we were able to better utilize our space and that allowed us to create a new area which has become our main gallery to allow us to have a permanent exhibit like Connections, and every six months or so we can rotate in and out new artifacts,” Pazour said.
“We will make our determination of which pieces might stay on display longer than other pieces based on what we note from patrons’ interest, time-investment and interaction with the exhibit.”
Other showcased highlights include a cash register from 1914 which was a longtime retail fixture of Wark’s Hardware in downtown Valparaiso, which closed in the 1990s after more than a century in operation.
Pazour and Just opted to pair the cash register with a small metal vessel which served as one of the capsules which floated through the pneumatic tube system for decades at Lowenstine’s Department Store in downtown Valparaiso, until the retail landmark was destroyed by a fire in 1996.
“So many museum patrons tell us about their memories of Lowenstine’s and they always seem to mention recalling the tubes connected to all of the cash register stations for clerks to send currency or receive change by sending these vessels up through the ceiling to the upstairs finance department, where the request was filled and the vessels sent back down through the same tube system,” Pazour said.
“The vessel we have on display is on loan from a patron who had one because of her connection working at the store.”
Just said of all the items included in the exhibit, the largest is a dress which was made from a World War II parachute and the oldest is a journal dating from 1799, which belonged to Porter
County early settler Joseph Bailly.
“The Porter County Museum has been around for 106 years and we’ve gathered a considerable amount of artifacts in our collection,” Just said.
“Originally, our concept for this permanent exhibit was to title it ‘From A to Z’ and have one item representing every letter in the alphabet. But we soon realized, based on our main gallery space, that would be too overwhelming.”
Just said he devised the idea of Connections, and spotlighting just a dozen or so paired items, after a visit to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and noting their similar exhibit theme and design.
Just said the “newest” piece included for the Porter County Museum Connections exhibit is a
1998 rookie basketball card for player Bryce Drew, a graduate of Valparaiso High School and Valparaiso University, during his team time with the Houston Rockets.
“I love that this exhibit has just a wide span of subject matter,” Pazour said.
“Objects tell stories. Having patrons engage with displays like this one leads to discoveries. It’s a museum’s job to help make connections.”