Three new exhibitions have been featured this summer at Austin’s Manitoba Agricultural Museum (MAM), each sharing a unique perspective on agriculture and how they fit into our historical landscape.
Museum curator, Tricia Dyck, says she was honored to incorporate these diverse perspectives on agriculture into their regular programming and on-site displays.
“The first new exhibit that we had installed here this summer was back in June,” explains Dyck. “The Manitoba Farmstead Shelterbelts, and that was curated and designed by Brenda Brown and her team of grad students. This exhibit will be on display until the end of September.”
“We’ve installed this exhibition in one of our heritage buildings, inside Centerville school, a really nice building that we’ve had here for a very long time that we’re kind of using as a new function, a more modern gallery space. It’s video work along with images and text, and I’m really excited that there’s video because we hear and see the trees that she’s talking about in her shelterbelts exhibition.”
“It’s really an important aspect to see because they’re just as important a part of farm life and rural life as our tractors and fields,” she continues. “And so, although we know that shelterbelts have all kinds of stories, we are seeing and hearing our visitors talk about their memories of planting them and watering and how many years it took and how their dads worked, and then later to have families and kids talk about playing in those shelterbelts too. It’s just a really rich additional story to the already really robust agricultural narrative that we have here at the museum.”
The First Farmers exhibition celebrates Indigenous farming in Manitoba, this being their second newest addition this summer.
“This is an all-indigenous agricultural exhibit,” shares Dyck. “We were very, very pleased and honored to have Amanda McLeod from Sagkeeng First Nation as a guest curator for all of the research on that project, something we have never had here. It’s a really beautiful visual exhibit along with a really rich and deep new understanding on what indigenous agriculture and farming was like way prior to the settler arrival here.”
“That’s extremely important to add to our story, obviously,” she adds. “Most museums have a sort of euro-settler focused foundation and now those museums, and us too, we’re working towards some decolonization efforts, and also adding to all of these other stories that are just as important.”
The First Farmers exhibit and the Women’s Labour: In the Home and in the Workplace, exhibit have become permanent displays for the museum.
Tricia Dyck says the Women’s Labour exhibit features women in the workplace and in the home and on the farm.
“Our third newest exhibit is a smaller exhibit, and a special exhibit created by our Summer Curatorial Assistant, Brenna Sadler. Her deep desire is to have women represented and so she created Women’s Labour: In the Home and in the Workplace. And so, in her exhibit, we see all kinds of things that would be used in women’s work, such as nurses’ uniforms, a teacher’s slate, even a little baby doll to represent some of the domestic work that women were doing.”
“But it’s really important here for our museum because we have had so many fantastic exhibitions and demonstrations over the years that have just widely supported equipment and technology,” she adds, “and so this is a nod to the women that are also just as important in those efforts.”