Brigham City Museum’s exhibits highlight sesquicentennial of the railroad

politico.com

It’s the 150th anniversary of the completion of the country’s transcontinental railroad at Promontory Point, Utah.  As you might expect, the nearby Brigham City Museum of Art and History is presenting two exhibits to celebrate the sesquicentennial: The Spike at 150: Myths and Realities, and Zhi Lin: Tracing Chinese Workers’ Footsteps to Promontory Summit.

The exhibits opened on March 23rd and continue through June 15th. On KVNU’s For the People program on Tuesday, museum curator and director Kaia Michaelis said they looked at putting on exhibits that are unique.

“As we started planning for 2019 with our exhibits, we really wanted to be able to do something to highlight the history of the construction of the railroad. We really wanted to do something kind of different; we really wanted to look at some of the questions that people don’t talk about a lot with the railroad.

“The whole focus of this exhibition is looking at those more unknown pieces. We’ve taken apart the myths and tried to get out what the real truth is of some of these things,” according to Michaelis.

She said that includes looking at the Chinese experience building the railroad, which was difficult because there are not great records documenting their experience. Michaelis said that’s because many of those workers returned home to China or went other places in the West.

Other events to come while the exhibits are on display: May 4th at 3 p.m., the Old Glory Vintage Dancers will demonstrate and provide instruction of historical dancing.  Then, in June, the museum will be open 6 to 9 p.m. on a rare Monday evening, with a historical fashion show at 6:30 p.m. featuring 18th to 20th century clothing.   Get more information at http://brighamcitymuseum.org

AUDIO:  BC Museum director Kaia Michaelis talks to Jason Williams

Free News Delivery by Email

Would you like to have the day's news stories delivered right to your inbox every evening? Enter your email below to start!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

For security, use of Google's reCAPTCHA service is required which is subject to the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

I agree to these terms.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.