MassMu Initiates Lower Level Lobby Display Series

MassMu Initiates Lower Level Lobby Display Series

Now Massillon Museum visitors can see another changing display space. Museum educator Jill Malusky Bacon has transformed two table cases and the wall backdrop in the lower lobby into a small thematic display area. She has first focused on clocks, calendars, and celebrations, marking the beginning of the new year.

One case includes a wall clock, pocket watches, a sun dial, railroad watches, and ladies’ timepieces from the Museum’s permanent collection—accompanied by famous quotations about time. The backdrop features calendars and a look at how they have evolved. The second case, representing celebration, festively displays glassware—a decanter, wine glasses, a mug, Massillon-made beer bottles, and a bottle bearing a Cabbut’s Whiskey label from the Home Liquor Company in Massillon. Images of Massillonians celebrating at parties and parades as well as international celebrations create the backdrop.

New to the Museum, Malusky Bacon invited her parents, Jack and Joanne Malusky of Medina County, to help her with the display so they could see the scope of the Massillon Museum’s collection and bring laypersons’ vision to the project.

“These seasonal displays represent a style different from the rest of the Museum,” explains Malusky Bacon. “The objects are not interpreted in the traditional way. They are not necessarily shown in social context with labels listing dates, use, and previous owners.” She hopes that this style of display will help viewers see objects in new ways. The intimate space will enable the Museum to show smaller objects that could be overwhelmed in its larger gallery spaces.

Second-floor permanent collection galleries change regularly. Right now, visitors can see the Curiosity Cabinet display, the Paul L. David Sports Gallery, a pioneer kitchen, a timeline of Massillon and Massillon Museum history, and Bob Graber’s opera house model. “The Greatest Generation”—the most recently installed second-floor exhibition— encompasses objects and images representing the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Art and artifacts surrounding The Immel Circus change, but the circus itself is on permenant exhibit.

The current main gallery show, the Stark County Artists Exhibition, will continue through February 8, 2009. First-floor exhibitions change at least five times each year.

The Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Sunday from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. The Chit Chat Coffee Shop in the Museum lobby is open Monday through Thursday from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.; Friday and Saturday from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.; and Sunday from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. Ample free parking is available on adjacent streets and in nearby city lots. A visit to the Massillon Museum is always free.
For more information, call the Massillon Museum at 330-833-4061, or visit www.massillonmuseum.org.

Media Contacts:
Christine Fowler Shearer, Massillon Museum Executive Director – 330-833-4061 / cshearer@massillonmuseum.org
Jill Malusky Bacon, Museum Educator – 330-833-4061 / jbacon@massillonmuseum.org
Margy Vogt, Massillon Museum Public Relations Coordinator – 330-844-1525 / vogt@sssnet.com