Traveling Exhibition Services
The Michigan State University Museum has developed this Traveling Exhibition Service to make the results of its extensive research, collections, and educational programs accessible to a wider audience.
Contacts:
Traveling Exhibition Service Coordinator
Michigan State University Museum
East Lansing, MI 48824-1045
Phone: 517.432.0699
E-mail: frenchve@msu.edu
Africa
- Ahmed "Kathy" Kathrada: A South African Activist for Non-Racialism and Democracy
- Dear Mr. Mandela....Dear Mrs. Parks: Children's Letters, Global Lessons
- Images of Human Rights: South African Prints
- Siyazama: Traditional Arts, Education, and AIDS in South Africa
- Quilting Sisters: African-American Quiltmaking in Michigan
- Unpacking Collections: The Legacy of Cuesta Benberry, An African American Quilt Scholar
- Welcome to Idlewild: The Black Eden of Michigan
- America’s Fairs: Educating Communitites
- Fairtime: America's Fairs, Horse Racing and Livestock
- Horse Racing and Early FairTime Entertainment
- Livestock Heritage: Serving a Nation
- Michigan Eats: Regional Culture Through Food
- Michigan Heritage Barns: An Artist’s Perspective
- Storytelling Through the Mail: Tall Tale Postcards
- The Unauthorized Audubon...a conversation in prints and poetry
- A Community Between Two Worlds: Arab Americans in Greater Detroit
- Immigration and Caricature: Ethnic Images from the Appel Collection
- Quilts of Southwest China
- Uneasy Years: Michigan Jewry During Depression and War
- Ahmed "Kathy" Kathrada: A South African Activist for Non-Racialism and Democracy
- Dear Mr. Mandela....Dear Mrs. Parks: Children's Letters, Global Lessons
- Images of Human Rights: South African Prints
- The International Print Portfolio: Artists’ Expressions of Universal Human Rights
- Quilts and Human Rights
- Siyazama: Traditional Arts, Education, and AIDS in South Africa
- A Community Between Two Worlds: Arab Americans in Greater Detroit
- Campus and Community: MSU's Land-Grant Tradition of Community-Engaged Action
- Great Lakes Native Quilting
- The Mary Schafer Collection: A Legacy of Quilt History
- Michigan Eats: Regional Culture Through Food
- Michigan Folksong Legacy: Grand Discoveries from the Great Depression
- Michigan Heritage Barns: An Artist’s Perspective
- Michigan Quilt Project Blocks
- MSU American Indian Heritage Pow Wow Portraits: Photographs by Douglas Elbinger
- Rags, Rugs and Weavers: A Living Tradition
- Uneasy Years: Michigan Jewry During Depression and War
- Welcome to Idlewild: The Black Eden of Michigan
- Great Lakes Native Quilting
- MSU American Indian Heritage Pow Wow Portraits: Photographs by Douglas Elbinger
- To Honor and Comfort: Native Quilting Traditions
- To Honor and Comfort: Native Quilting Traditions (interpretive panel version)
- Great Lakes Native Quilting
- The Mary Schafer Collection: A Legacy of Quilt History
- Michigan Quilt Project Blocks
- Quilting Sisters: African-American Quiltmaking in Michigan
- Quilts and Human Rights
- Quilts of Southwest China
- Quilts Old and New: Reproductions from the Great Lakes Quilt Center
- Rags, Rugs and Weavers: A Living Tradition
- Redwork: A Textile Tradition in America
- To Honor and Comfort: Native Quilting Traditions
- To Honor and Comfort: Native Quilting Traditions (interpretive panel version)
- Unpacking Collections: The Legacy of Cuesta Benberry, An African American Quilt Scholar
Nelson Mandela's prison mate, confidante, parliamentary counselor and friend Ahmed Kathrada is the subject of a new nationally touring exhibition. "Ahmed 'Kathy' Kathrada: A South African Activist for Non-Racialism and Democracy tells the story of the renowned advocate for freedom, as well as the anti-apartheid movement itself through the life and work of South Africa's beloved "Kathy." Kathy's exemplary leadership continues to inspire South Africans and others around the world to work for freedom, non-racialism, and democracy.
In southwest China, traditional bed coverings and other household items have often been made, like American quilts, of small pieces of fabric that are patched and appliquéd together to form artistic, functional textiles. A bi-national consortium of American and Chinese museums, led by the Michigan State University Museum and the Yunan Nationalities Museum (Kunming), has conducted research on this important element of intangible and tangible cultural heritage tradition Now this groundbreaking exhibition provides American audiences with a glimpse into the historical and contemporary practice of this Chinese textile art.
Created by the staffs of the MSU Museum and the Nelson Mandela Museum along with other MSU faculty, staff and students and community members in South Africa and Michigan, "Dear Mr. Mandela, Dear Mrs. Parks: Children's Letters, Global Lessons" is an exhibit of letters written by children from all over the world to human rights leaders Nelson Mandela and the late Rosa Parks The exhibition first opened at the Nelson Mandela National Museum in Mthatha, South Africa. Two traveling versions of the exhibitions are now traveling, one each in South Africa and the United States. The exhibition includes video-taped welcoming comments from three Nobel Prize awardees: President Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and President Obama and each venue is encouraged to provide letter writing stations where visitors of all ages can write letters to Parks, Mandela, or people that they feel have made a change in their lives, their communities, or the world. 
The inspiration for "Dear Mr. Mandela.....Dear Mrs. Parks" came from the hundreds of children around the world who have written letters to two individuals--Nelson Mandela of South Africa and the late Rosa Parks of the United States--who are internationally known for their work in human rights. The letters reveal why children revere Mandela and Parks and also how young people's desires for guidance and understanding about life.
"The exhibit also encourages visitors - especially youth -- to understand and be tolerant of diverse cultures and traditions, become aware of the ongoing struggle for human rights around the world, and recognize ways to honor individuals in their own families and communities who--like Mandela and Parks--have contributed, in large and small ways, to making a better world," notes MSU Museum curator, C. Kurt Dewhurst, one of the exhibit's organizers.
"It was an honor to host this powerful and provocative exhibit." 
This exhibition has been displayed at the Michigan State University Museum, East Lansing, MI; The African American Performing Arts Center, Albuquerque, NM; Institute for Community Research, Hartford, CT; the Spurlock Museum, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL; and Mathers Museum of World Cultures, Bloomington, IN.
Benberry had a long association with the MSU Museum, the home of the 
Schedule
"Great Display! Very informative. I know a lot more about Idlewild than before."
Idlewild, located in rural northwestern Michigan, holds a special place in the nation's segregated history. For many years, this "Black Eden" was one of only a few resorts in the country where African-Americans could vacation and purchase property. From 1912 through the mid-1960s, Idlewild was an active year-round community and was visited by well-known entertainers and professionals from throughout the country. At its peak it was the most popular resort in the Midwest and as many as 25,000 would come to Idlewild in the height of the summer season to enjoy camping, swimming, boating, fishing, hunting, horseback riding, roller skating and night-time entertainment. When the 1964 Civil Rights Act opened up other resorts to African-Americans, Idlewild's boomtown period subsided but the community continues to be an important place for vacationers and retirees. Idlewild also holds special meaning as a place for younger generations of African-Americans seeking to learn about their heritage.
America's agricultural fairs focused on educating farmers and their families and in doing so created a continuing annual American tradition. Reproductions of artworks, created between 1880 - 1920 to promote county and state fairs, illustrate the emergence of a unique educational fair in America where competition was the vehicle to inform and to inspire, strengthening a national industry--agriculture.
"The library gained so much- publicity, new connections with members of the community and local organizations, and new ventures into programming that will guide the library's long range planning."
"Nice cross section of Michigan barns and presentation."
The Unauthorized Audubon is a conversation in prints and poetry, a quirky and light-hearted coupling of creative expression between two Residential College in the Arts and Humanities (RCAH) faculty members on the Michigan State University campus. Birds provide the inspiration for the imagery and verses.
Laura B. DeLind holds a joint appointment in the Department of Anthropology and the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities at MSU. Trained as an anthropologist and critical food-system analyst, she also is a working graphic artist. She has been designing linocuts and hand pulling prints for over thirty years. Her prints sell nationally, appear in permanent art collections, and have been turned into logos and rubber stamps. Laura has had several one woman shows, but the Unauthorized Audubon, a series of 22 poems and prints done with poet Anita Skeen, is her first artistic collaboration. 
This exhibition explores the dilemmas of Michigan Jews during Depression and WWII, at once increasingly at home in Michigan and the US, yet anxious amidst depression and rising anti-Semitism in the US, and the rise of Nazism, terror, and the war abroad. Five themes include:
In the modern, human-dominated world, a wide variety of pests threaten our environment, agriculture, and health, and must be controlled. Part of the strategy for controlling pests is the use of chemicals that kill or reduce the numbers of the pest; and 50 years ago, a publication alerted the people of the world to potential dangers in pesticide use. This book was Silent Spring, written by Rachel Carson and published in 1962. The MSU Museum revisits the publication of this landmark book, credited with launching the modern environmental movement.
Rental fee (12-week period): 
"I urge our nation's best universities to join in the journey to reaffirm and to extend beyond our borders the core values of the Morrill Act as the fuel and inspiration for higher education's engagement with a global society in the century ahead."--Dr. LouAnna K. Simon, President, Michigan State University, 2012.
Michigan Folksong Legacy: Grand Discoveries from the Great Depression
Alan Lomax's Michigan Legacy
"It was a great addition to our quilt show. As a matter of fact the blocks received 3 votes for viewers choice." —C.A.M.E.O. Quilt Guild, West Bloomfield, MI 
30 oversized quilt blocks ready for hanging with accompanying object labels. The blocks include ones related to Michigan history and its cultural and natural resources. 
Of the many North American Indian expressive art forms, perhaps one of the least well known is quiltmaking. This exhibition celebrates quilting within diverse communities and pays homage to the artists who have expressed their cultural heritage and creativity through this art. It examines how quilts and quilting-the ceremonies surrounding them, the society of the artists who make them, and the passing on of traditions through quilts- bind neighbors and families within and across generations.
