Our Own Mini Museum

Being a museum curator can sometimes be a difficult job. There's a lot you have to take into consideration when creating an exhibit many people are going to be seeing and judging with their own personal opinions of what makes a good looking exhibit. It is important that you display key information quickly in a short few sentences.   In class, we split into small groups and created our own little exhibits on different topics from the Industrial Revolution. Our group's was about steam powered transportation and controversy over it. It was titled "Steam Powered Transportation: Now We're Getting Somewhere". Earlier we had written what we thought was a good process a museum curator should go through when creating a presentation. We made sure to follow after those steps as best as we could. We received six sources for our topic and the first thing we did was analyze each one and pull out important information the reader should know in order to understand the topic better. We created descriptions for each source describing its purpose and providing information connecting back to the main topic. After we figured out approximate sizes of each piece being displayed (they all needed to fit on a big piece of paper we were provided with) we needed to figure out the order of them and how to display them. The exhibit starts with a diagram showing how the steam engine works to make the viewer familiar with it since it was mentioned through the rest of the exhibit. After that, there was a map of metal and coal production which were important for industrialization and creating steam engines. Then, there was a timeline of many locomotives that were built that flowed through the middle and side of the paper. After the timeline was a painting of a steam powered train and a debate about the effectiveness of steam engines. Finally, there was a letter about the greatness of the steam engine with important quotes taken out and enlarged. We constructed our exhibit before displaying it for the whole school to see and learn from.

Our presentation
"Steam Powered Transportation: Now We're Getting Somewhere"

There were four other groups that had different topics. The first was titled "Spinning into Slavery". It was about slavery in the U.S. and its involvement in mills. After the start of the Industrial Revolution, slavery increased by a lot because workers for cotton and textile mills were in high demand and helpless people were used to make mony off of manufactured goods. The second one was called "Spinning a City". This one was about the advancements of textile mills. The textile loom had been created to be able to weave clothes faster. Textile mills were powered by steam engines and helped produce a larger amount of clothing for people while making it easier for workers. The third one was called "Pollution of the Revolution". Big industries and more machinery being created meant there was more waste and fuel that needed to go somewhere and the Industrial Revolution brought on a lot of pollution making rivers gross and flooding town streets with polluted water creating an environment that was not fit for living in. Finally, the fourth one was "Condemning the Innocent: Child Labor in the Industrial Revolution". As you can tell from the title, this one was about the use of child labor in industries. Most workers in cotton mills started when they were under 10 years old. Children needed work to support their families and turned to the mills as a convenient place for a job despite the poor work conditions and health risks they faced.