The Daily Mining Gazette - Published: Friday, July 13, 2007 Print Article | Close Window Food exhibits now on display ‘Key Ingredients: America by Food’is fun, educational CAPTION: Jane Nordberg/Daily Mining Gazette Jo Urion, left, and Stephanie Atwood, right, install a panel on the Smithsonian Institute’s Key Ingredients exhibit Thursday while Kim Hoagland, back, reads instructions on the next step. The exhibit opens tonight at 6 p.m. at the Keweenaw Heritage Center in Calumet. By JANE NORDBERG, DMG Writer CALUMET — After eight hours of hauling Plexiglas panels and hanging fabric banners Thursday, Kim Hoagland was ready to call it a day. “It’s been a long day,” she said. “Wonderful and productive, but long.” Hoagland led a team of volunteers through the installation of the Key Ingredients and Michigan Foodways exhibits Thursday at the Keweenaw Heritage Center at St. Anne’s in Calumet. Key Ingredients: America by Food is a nationally touring Smithsonian Institute exhibit visiting six sites in Michigan over the next 14 months. A corresponding Michigan Foodways exhibit developed by the Michigan State University Museum is traveling with it. Both exhibits will be open to the public at no charge from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily through Aug. 26., when they will leave Calumet and head for Cheboygan, the next stop on the tour. The exhibits arrived on a semi-truck Wednesday from Chelsea, near Ann Arbor, the kick-off location for the tour. A team of volunteers including Youth Conservation Corps workers helped to unload the exhibits, which arrived in 19 rolling caster boxes designed by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES). A different team of volunteers were on hand Thursday with Hoagland to help install the exhibits. Key Ingredients is comprised of five different free-standing kiosks that illustrate such varied food-related themes as hunting, fishing, gardening, preserving, table manners, regional specialties and even fast-food dining. Some are supplemented with interactive attachments known as “tidbits” that focus on different foods such as pizza, nachos and frybread. Other kiosks contain artifacts, such as menus, canned food and even a Green Bay Packer “Cheesehead” hat. “It’s very cleverly-designed,” said Hoagland, who received installation training in late May when the exhibit opened in Chelsea. “It has a lot of objects for a traveling exhibit.” Despite being a day-long process, the installation of the two exhibits in Calumet went smoothly, Hoagland said, largely in part to well-written instructions from the Smithsonian and the dedication of the volunteers who helped. “It looks great in the space, and I think people are going to be really impressed with how much there is to learn,” she said. A kickoff event is planned for 6 p.m. tonight at the Keweenaw Heritage Center. State Sen. Mike Lahti, D-Hancock, is scheduled to attend as will Michigan Humanities Council Executive Director Jan Fedewa and the curator of the Michigan Foodways exhibit, MSU ethnographer Yvonne Lockwood. Two other events are scheduled for this weekend to coincide with the exhibits’ opening. Saturday at 3 p.m. at the Keweenaw Heritage Center, historian Larry Lankton will give a talk on “Keweenaw Foodways.” Sunday, the Friends of Fashion in Chassell will host a Victorian Tea at the Laurium Manor Inn from 1 to 4 p.m. The tea is a fee event. Volunteers are still needed to help keep the exhibits open for viewing from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. daily through Aug. 26. Those interested in taking a shift should contact Hoagland at 482-7674. Jane Nordberg can be reached at jnordberg@mininggazette.com