Gatheround: Stories of Atlanta. Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, GA.

Jesse Garbowski,
Exhibition Project Manager, Calinda Lee, Executive Historian, Erica Hague, Collections
Manager, and the Gatheround: Stories of Atlanta project team. July 2, 2016 – Ongoing.
https://www.atlantahistorycenter.com/explore/exhibitions/gatheround-stories-of-atlanta

Gatheround seeks to tell the whole story of the city of Atlanta, from before it was called

Atlanta to the present. Through a new and exciting use of community history, effective

interactives, and a concentrated effort to widen the scope of the historic narrative, Gatheround

tells the history of Atlanta by allowing guests to see themselves in that history. From the

beginning Gatheround proves itself to be an exhibit concerned with community history. As

guests walk into the exhibit, they see a video which is made up of testimonies from Atlanta’s

residents. The testimonies are from a wide variety of people, experts in parts of Atlanta’s history,

business owners, even neighborhood community members are included in this video. While their

views on Atlanta are diverse, they all share an excited love of the city.

This sets the tone for the rest of the exhibit, along with the colors used in the video and

throughout the exhibit. This is a joyful exhibition, this is a celebration of the city. While there

will be difficult events and themes addressed within the exhibit, the overall tone is excitement

about what the city has grown into and what it can become with the help of its current citizens.

Gatheround invites continued participation from Atlanta’s citizens through using hashtags to

start conversations outside the exhibit [Insert Stockdale Image 1] and providing a place for

people to record their own stories and experiences of Atlanta for inclusion in the exhibit.

Community history is an anchor of the exhibit. After the introductory video, guests are

introduced to stories of contemporary Atlanta couples just after a section on the LGTBQ+

community in Atlanta. These couples are pictures on a screen and when their pictures are

selected, an oral history recording plays, generally telling the story of their meeting or
relationship. These couples include interracial couples and LGBTQ+ couples. Just after this

interactive the guests have a choice. If they go left, they will be facing the back of the

introductory video screen, where another large screen holds more tiles of people that when

selected play a short video of them sharing an experience of Atlanta. [Insert Stockdale Image 2]

It is here that guests can enter a recording booth and film a short video for inclusion in the

exhibit. [Insert Stockdale Image 3] I do wonder if there is enough scaffolding for this interaction,

while part of the door is frosted glass that blocks the upper part of the chair where people sit, the

rest of the door is clear, and it is located near the entrance/exit which puts in directly in the path

of foot traffic and may discourage people because of a fishbowl effect while in the recording

booth.

Gatheround’s dedication to inclusivity makes it a standout. Minority history is not only

included, it is worked into the main narrative of the exhibit. On the section about how railways

built and supported the city, the contributions of minorities and women are written into the main

panel text, not in a small section off to the side under a heading like “women and railroads,”

which is so often how museums exhibit diversity. The next section is on the 1881 Atlanta

Washerwomen’s Strike, a strike planned by African American women in response to rich white

citizens trying to exploit their labor much as they had done during enslavement. This history, the

inclusion of the response to the AIDS crisis in the LGBTQ+ communities of Atlanta, the stories

of African American representatives during Reconstruction, close looks at the Historically Black

Colleges of Atlanta and the Atlanta Nine, alongside a look at the 1906 race riot makes clear that

this exhibit is dedicated to telling previously ignored history. Gatheround also looks at the more

recent history of immigration and minorities through the use of a Quinceañera dress, a child’s
hanbok, and religious artifacts related to Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism. [Insert Stockdale Image

4 and 5]

The wall of videos about Atlanta and its citizens is one example of the interactives woven

through the exhibit. Many of the interactives are technology based, another screen of faces

allows guests to choose oral histories and a tablet stations allows guests to interact with the

changing demographics of Atlanta and then displays their choices on a larger screen. Other

interactives are still technology based but built into the setting of a display, the oral histories in

the Gatheround restaurant are triggered when guests key in options to a small jukebox on each

table. [Insert Stockdale Image 6] The barbershop display gives guests the ability to place

themselves in a community event through a mirror that turns into a screen with the picture of the

event and an image of the guest inserted in. [Insert Stockdale Image 7] The fact that guests listen

to the oral history of a barber describing this event makes it even more engaging and can make it

feel as though they are in the event as it happens, or having a conversation because they can see

what the event was like.

For those who are more hands on there are still the traditional physical interactives. One

of my favorites is the interactive of different maps that can be pulled across a satellite image of

Atlanta. [Insert Stockdale Image 8] This promotes active learning in the people who pull the

different maps across and even works with people who just pass, because they are seeing what

other guests learned through the specific map left over the image. I do wonder if this map and the

tablet map station next to it could be moved to the section on Atlanta’s immigrants and the

effects climate change is having on the city. They seem out of place in their current location,

especially because they are leading up to present day and then the exhibit returns to the

nineteenth century directly after them. The section on immigrants and the climate is also
interactive low, so it might be a good place to add a participatory element. The interactive with

the Atlanta washerwoman’s strike shows the true physicality of their work, how heavy the

laundry itself and the paddles they used to wash the clothes were – certainly not as easy as

tossing laundry in a washing machine. There are also steps up to the interactive washing bucket

that allows people who are not tall to participate as well. [Insert Stockdale Image 9]

An area for improvement would be the movement through the gallery. The layout does

not restrict movement, but it provides too many choices, the navigational path is not clear. The

introduction of the timeline primes the guest to think that the exhibit will be laid out

chronologically and it seems like it is at first, with the main exhibit starting in the nineteenth

century. But then, just across from panels on segregation in the late nineteenth early twentieth

centuries and the fire of 1916 is a panel on the ADIS crisis in Atlanta’s LGTBQ+ community in

the 1980s. Next to that, an interactive jumps into the present by showing oral histories of modern

Atlanta couples. After this there is a choice, left continues the modern experiences of Atlanta,

right rewinds the guest back to the nineteenth century suffrage struggles and to reconstruction in

Atlanta. Forward brings you to the entrances of several galleries that are ordered thematically,

though it is not always clear if that side of the gallery is the beginning. The edges of the exhibit

are generally given to interactive experience, the section on child labor of the nineteenth and

twentieth centuries whose interactives are triggered by motion sensors, the barbershop which

spans the early twentieth century to the present, the music interactive section which again spans

the twentieth and twenty first centuries, and the Gatheround restaurant lunch counters which

focus on the civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s.

The lunch counters are separated from the discussion of integration in Atlanta with the

Atlanta Nine, whose panels are on the opposite side of the exhibit space. This separation breaks a
thematic setup and leaves guests uncertain of why are seeing this information when they are. I

felt like I was going the wrong way and even asked the person I came to the exhibit with if I was

entering one of the galleries the right way. I did feel slightly discomforted by it and while I know

I did not miss any information; a regular museum goer might not be so sure. Entering the gallery

the wrong way could create a feeling of moving through the exhibit in an ‘incorrect’ way and

might put the guests off balance for the rest of their time in the exhibit. Moving back and forth in

time so constantly creates a feeling that guests are missing a part of the exhibit that would

connect the two times. Perhaps moving the section on desegregation and other Civil Rights

movements in Atlanta closer to the restaurant display would help to tighten up the themes.

Providing a map at the beginning of the exhibit either as handouts or as a large map people could

scan or take pictures of would prime the guests for navigating the various themes. The timeline

could also be removed from the beginning of the exhibit, removing expectations of a

chronological exhibit. Almost everything discussed in the timeline is expanded upon in the main

exhibit, so no information would be lost. The section that is the timeline could then be

transformed to include the one group that Gatheround does not do justice.

Despite its commitment to inclusivity, Gatheround skates over the history of indigenous

people at the site of Atlanta. They are only mentioned in the exhibit in the timeline, which starts

with an acknowledgement that the indigenous Woodlands peoples inhabited the site of Atlanta in

1000 B.C.E. The timeline then skips 800 years ahead to 1814 when Fort Peachtree was

established, giving the impression that in the eyes of the exhibit, nothing important happened on

this land or to indigenous peoples until white people arrived. [Insert Stockdale Image 10] The

other mention of indigenous peoples is how they lost their land, with a quick mention of the

Georgia land lottery and Treaty of New Echota that does not have nearly enough context. [Insert
Stockdale Image 11] The Treaty was signed by people who did not have the consent of the

Cherokee Tribe and was therefore seen as illegal and not binding by the Cherokee. This view

was not shared the U.S. government and they subsequently used the treaty to force people off

their land during the Trail of Tears. Not including this context of the treaty erases the struggle

and legal battle the Cherokee Tribe went through to fight for their land. The exhibit’s light

treatment of indigenous peoples erases their rich history and the connection they had with the

land that was taken from them. A more detailed description of what the land of Atlanta meant to

indigenous people and how it was taken would not only be more true to the exhibit’s dedication

to inclusivity but would also leave guests with a fuller picture of what the city of Atlanta means.

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