On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 3:17 PM, Davis, Robbie <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Everyone,

As you know from Carol's announcement, we're excited that our newly-selected "Hometown Teams" exhibition is beginning development. Of course, that also means we've got a lot of work ahead of us. We'd love to have your help and input as we begin identifying images for the exhibition.

Our many journeys for MoMS have taught us many things. Perhaps most importantly, we know that communities, small museums and small historical societies all over the country have vast collections -- objects, images, you name it. And, we believe that "Hometown Teams" will really benefit from identifying images from every corner of the country to illustrate the impact that sports has on building nation and community.

Here's our plea. We know that you all know your state's cultural organizations extremely well. Your own travels in your states have likely revealed great local collections of sports images. Could you please let us know of communities and museums in your state that you know have important images reflecting sports history in your state or in their community? It could be photos from a 1925 basketball championship game, or a photo of crowds at a high school football game, or the first African American baseball player in a rural community. We would like to begin researching and obtaining images for the exhibition immediately. Leads from you will help us tremendously. We look to many great archives and repositories to develop MoMS exhibitions. We'll research them again for this project, but we feel strongly this time that photos documenting local sports tend to remain close to home. We know that including these images will make this project incredibly rich and provide a solid foundation for superb local exhibitions and programs.

Please feel free to contact me ([log in to unmask]), Tiffany Ruhl ([log in to unmask]), and Alex Charleston ([log in to unmask]) with any suggestions. We're also planning to send a note next week to past and future venues in our database to request their help and will mention our search on our blog, Facebook page and Twitter feed.

Thanks in advance for helping us with this project.

All the best,
Robbie

Robbie Davis
Project Director, Museum on Main Street
Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service
P.O. Box 37012 MRC 941
Washington, DC 20013-7012
202-633-5335
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