The Calico Rock Museum & Visitor Center is preparing for several improvements and enhancements to our exhibits over the next few months. One of the most exciting updates will be relocating our Homestead exhibit from the coal house into the main museum.
The exhibits were rarely seen in the coal house, despite a tremendous amount of effort by the Calico Bluff Chapter of Questers International in setting up the exhibit. Opening the coal house on a regular basis subjected the items on display to theft and controlling the temperature in the building proved impossible on a regular basis.
The coal house will be repurposed as an education center to teach classes on history, science and art. This will be a great space for our school groups and summer day camps and adult classes.
Bringing the homestead exhibit into the main gallery will allow us to share that important history with the community. There will also be upgrades and enhancements to our trading post and depot exhibits. In fact, our plan is to create a scaled version of what the original depot looked like from photos we have in our collection. This will free up space to talk about farming and industry that was important to our area. The new exhibit on farming and industry will hopefully allow us to share our history of growing cotton in the area, timber industry, how the Calico Rock Ice & Electric Plant worked, talk about the Hayes Brothers Flooring Mill, and other major industries in our area. This exhibit is still in the planning stages, but we are really excited to have the space to talk about this important part of our history.
Speaking of history, the Calico Rock Museum is first and foremost a history museum. Even when we share the art of our community, we are paying tribute to our history. Most of what we consider art today has a historical importance. Painting was first developed by cave dwelling Native Americans who used crushed berries to paint on the walls of their shelter caves or along rock outcroppings to share stories with other tribes that would come by later. This same method of communicating was used most recently by hobos traveling America by rail. They used charcoal from the steam trains to make markings on fences near the railroad to share information about places to find shelter or food, or places that were dangerous.
Blacksmithing was very practical for early settlers. Today, blacksmithing skills have developed into modern sculpture art.
In our artisan cooperative gift shop, we sell handcrafted jewelry, handmade soaps, pottery, etc. These items had a very practical use for pioneer living. They were used around the house and farm to live. Today, we call all of those skills art.
This winter you will see us begin to communicate this history to our visitors.
We are excited about the planned improvements and updates at the Calico Rock Museum. Your support of our gift shop, the Printing Press Café, and your generous donations make these improvements possible.
On a closing point, we use GMail to organize and communicate with you. We have noticed in the past week that some e-mail addresses are not being included in the e-mails. We apologize for this error and will work to fix the problem. If you see someone who used to get the e-mails but is not on the list today, please share that with us.
And, if you would prefer to not receive any more e-mails from us, please let us know that, too.
Thank you for your support of the Calico Rock Museum & Visitor Center.
—
Calico Rock Museum Foundation
104 Main Street
Calico Rock, Arkansas 72519
870-297-6100
www.calicorockmuseum.com
