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Exhibit highlights
Atlanta in 50 Objects
By Joe Earle
Familiar sights crowd
the new exhibit at the
Atlanta History Center.
Georgia Tech’s Ramblin’
Wreck holds center
stage. A billboard-ready
Chick-fil-A cow protests
in one corner. A few
feet away, a Varsity car
hop’s tray hangs from a
door of a ’63 Plymouth
Valiant.
It’s no surprise
that the items in this
particular museum show
seem familiar. They’re
all part of Atlanta. Each
was chosen to represent
some important feature
of the city, the exhibit’s
curators say. The exhibit,
“Atlanta in 50 Objects,”
which opened Jan. 16
and is to be on display
through July 10, is
intended to show, in its
own way, what makes Atlanta Atlanta,
“I think my favorite thing is the
King manuscript,” guest curator Amy
Wilson said on the day before the
show opened, as she and History
Center Exhibitions Director Don
Rooney made last-minute tweaks to
the exhibit. She pointed toward a
case holding a series of handwritten
pages from a yellow legal pad
on which the Rev. Martin
Luther King Jr. had written
the acceptance speech for his
1964 Nobel Prize. “It’s the original
manuscript.”
Wilson and Rooney started
work on the project in November
2014. The original idea behind the
exhibit - gathering objects that
represent important themes or
events in history - had been used
in a few other high-profile museum
shows and books, such as “The
Smithsonian’s History of America
in 101 Objects.” The History Center
wanted to add another element
to their show. They wanted to let
Atlantans pick what should be
included.
“We turned it over to Atlanta,”
Rooney said.
The curators solicited ideas online
and through a suggestion box at the
center. Wilson and Rooney said they
built a database of 200 to 300 ideas
and let the most-nominated notions
rise to the top of the list. “The folks
who gave us these suggestions had
more knowledge on these subjects than,
we did,” Rooney said. “I think museum
have evolved to realize they have to
share the authority. The authorship of
this exhibit was the public.”
List of subjects in hand, Wilson and
Rooney set to work finding the objects
to illustrate the various subjects. It made
quite an eclectic collection.
What made the cut? A 1996 Olympic
JOE EARLE
Guest curator Amy Wilson, left, and Atlanta History Center Exhibi
tions Director Don Rooney, right, began planning for the "Atlanta in
50 Objects” show in 2014. Michonne’s sword from “The Walking
Dead,” below, is one of the objects.
torch and a classic Coke bottle,
a mockup of Hartsfield-Jackson
International Airport’s train-to-
the-planes and a 1960s uniform
for a Delta Air Lines stewardess, a
model of downtown from architect
John Portman’s offices showing the
buildings he’d designed and developed,
a World Series ring from the late
broadcaster Skip Carey, a figure of a
dying soldier from the Cyclorama,
the bat Hank Aaron used to hit his
600th homer, a T-shirt from the
Peachtree Road Race, a Centers for
Disease Control microscope, Atlanta
Constitution Editor Ralph McGill’s
Presidential Medal of Freedom, a Time
magazine naming Ted Turner “Man of
the Year.”
Rooney said the curators couldn’t
get everything they wanted into the
display. They asked for an original
typescript of “Gone With The Wind,”
but that had to remain in a vault. At one
point he thought it would be a good
idea to include the cockpit from a Delta
airplane, but decided it was just too big
to fit.
Still, some off-beat surprises did
manage to show up in the crowded
exhibit hall. A mold of the Atlanta Zoo’s
favorite gorilla, the late Willie B., has his
handprints displayed near a car from
Priscilla the Pink Pig, the children’s
ride that once graced Rich’s downtown
department store. Along with a display
about the civil rights movement is an ax
handle signed by segregationist Georgia
Gov. Lester Maddox. The rise of the
movie-making business is illustrated
through a signature sword one character
uses to lop the heads off zombies in
“The Walking Dead.”
What does the exhibit say about
Atlanta? “It’s a very diverse place,”
Wilson said. ESI
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