Press Release
November 9, 2015
Contact: Steve Hawkins
Oklahoma History Center, Oklahoma Historical Society
Office: 405-522-0754
shawkins@okhistory.org
www.okhistory.org/historycenter
Oklahoma History Center Celebrates 10th Anniversary with New Exhibit "Crossroads of Commerce"
Oklahoma City, Okla. — On November 16, 2015, the Oklahoma History Center will celebrate 10 successful years of collecting, preserving and sharing the story of Oklahoma through museum exhibits, educational programs, and research collections. In conjunction with the 10th anniversary, the History Center will be opening a new exhibit called "Crossroads of Commerce: A History of Free Enterprise in Oklahoma." The exhibit will open to the public on November 19.
The 8,000-square-foot exhibit will tell the story of economic development in Oklahoma through five time periods from 1716 to the present day. In each section, the exhibit will set the stage of history with the challenges and opportunities that ended one era and began another. Onto that stage will march the men and women who had ideas, decided to invest and developed a business plan that worked in that particular place and time. The rest of the story is adapting to subsequent changes, opening doors of opportunity for others, and giving back to the community through jobs, philanthropy and a better quality of life. The intent is to connect the dots between history and economic development in a way that celebrates creativity and hard work and inspires young people to take a chance.
The exhibit will feature a number of structural reproductions and eye-popping interactive opportunities. In one section, visitors will see an actual truss from the Wiley Post Hangar and enter the simulated cockpit of a Lockheed Vega airplane where he or she can fly over Oklahoma City and Tulsa with skylines as they would have appeared in 1935. Other features will include scenes of a newspaper printing operation, grist mill, cotton gin, grain elevator, Cain's Ballroom, a TG&Y store in the 1950s, the studios of WKY-Radio and WKY-TV, the Shelter Church Studio, and the Thunder scoreboard from Chesapeake Energy Arena.
The Oklahoma History Center is a division of the Oklahoma Historical Society and is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, National Archives and is an accredited member of the American Association of Museums. The mission of the Oklahoma Historical Society is to collect, preserve and share the history and culture of the state of Oklahoma and its people. Founded in 1893 by members of the Territorial Press Association, the OHS maintains 31 museums, historic sites and affiliates across the state. Through its research archives, exhibits, educational programs and publications the OHS chronicles the rich history of Oklahoma. For more information about the OHS, please visit www.okhistory.org.
###
