DEFENDERS OF THE GATE: A SOLDIER'S STORY
The idea for the exhibit Defenders of the Gate: a Soldier’s Story started in the summer of 2013 while I was an intern with the Golden Gate National Recreation Area’s Park Archives and Record Center (PARC), in San Francisco, California. For the past three years, the GGNRA has participated in the San Francisco History Expo that occurs at the beginning of March at the Old Mint in San Francisco. The History Expo is an annual event orchestrated by the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society featuring nearly fifty San Francisco historical organizations that showcase their groups and highlight their collections. My exhibit was available for a two-day showing over the weekend of March 1st and 2nd, 2014. On Saturday, March 1st, the exhibit was available for visitors from 11:00 am until 5:00 pm, and 11:00 am until 4:00 on Sunday afternoon, March 2nd. Throughout the exhibit planning and development, Amanda Williford, the curator and head archivist for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA), supervised and directed my progress and research.
Exhibit Proposal
The plan to complete a Creative Work Project for my culmination experience was a result of interactions with staff at GGNRA. In summer 2013, I informally proposed completing a creative work project with GGNRA to my supervisor. As a possible project, she mentioned the annual History Expo would be in March and to think about guest curating and designing an exhibit in conjunction with GGNRA. In October 2013, I decided that curating an exhibit was feasible and would also be an excellent curatorial and exhibit design experience. Significantly, because a large part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area’s collection is comprised of objects and archives from the U.S. Army’s history in the San Francisco Bay area, and much of this material can be used to tell a compelling story, I determined that there would be sufficient material to display. A review of the available material also suggested the stories of a soldier’s life through three main thematic areas could be communicated: work, life, and wartime. Subsequent research supported the strong nature of these three themes and were selected to form the basis of the exhibit, which came to be titled Defenders of the Gate: a Soldier’s Story.