In Search of Memories: Exploring the Archival Gaps between Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow is an interactive exhibition that invites past and present UM-Flint community members to share their stories and fill gaps within the historical archives.
Photographs on view in the gallery are part of the UM-Flint archives, which are held by the Genesee Historical Collections Center at the Frances Willson Thompson Library. These photographs are missing important identifying and contextual information, such as the names of the people photographed, the event where the photograph was taken, the year it was taken, and more. This data allows the important subjects depicted in the photographs to be searched and found. Without it, these photographs and the history they record are at risk of being left out of the story of UM-Flint. This exhibition highlights moments from UM-Flint’s past and invites YOU, to share information about the photographs on display.
While you engage with this exhibition, we hope that you will reflect on the important role that archives play in helping write histories. Today, we rely on archives to help us access and reconstruct our yesterday, even as archives continue to collect and preserve materials that will help us to tell today’s story tomorrow. When there is missing information in the archives, it becomes more difficult to tell a fuller story of our past. One of our goals at the Inclusive History Project is to work with people across and beyond our campuses to document and share a more comprehensive history that includes stories that have not been widely told before. This exhibition, and your engagement with it, moves these efforts forward.
Stories are important. What’s yours?
In Search of Memories: Exploring the Archival Gaps between Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow is inspired by an idea conceived of by UM-Flint Archivist, Callum Carr. The title of the exhibition makes reference to a special (and connected) homecoming event, the UM-Flint Students of Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow Mixer, being held in conjunction with the exhibition.
In Search of Memories: Exploring the Archival Gaps between Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow was organized by Callum Carr, Nalani Duarte, Jennifer Junkermeier-Khan, and Lisa Lapeyrouse with support from the Big Table UM-Flint Advisory Committee, Richard Bachmann, Audrey Banks, Jenni Brady, Kennedy Clark, Benjamin Gaydos, William Langford, Jonathan Quint, Audrey Scribner, Cristen Velliky, and Patricia Wintermeyer. Graphic design is by Diana Galicia Heredia.
All photographs included in the exhibition are courtesy of the Genesee Historical Collections Center at the Frances Willson Thompson Library, University of Michigan Flint. The exhibition is co-presented by the Inclusive History Project, Genesee Historical Collections Center, Flint Alumni Relations, Office of Housing and Residential Life, the Art & Art History Program, and Riverbank Arts.