Dust, Drought, and Dreams Gone Dry exhibit opens

About this event

See the Oklahoma Historical Society exhibit Dust, Drought, and Dreams Gone Dry at the Thomas K. McKeon Center for Creativity at TCC Metro Campus through December 8. The exhibition is part of the walkable downtown stops during the Route 66 Centennial Celebration festivities in Tulsa on November 11.

Dust, Drought, and Dreams Gone Dry is a traveling exhibit originally organized by the American Library Association, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Dr. Jess C. Porter from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. It traveled to 25 sites across the US and is now in the permanent care of the Oklahoma History Center Museum traveling exhibits program.

Part of the exhibit content was drawn from the Oklahoma State University library and features its Women of the Dust Bowl oral histories (visitors will find QR codes throughout the exhibit linking to these oral histories). Mount Holyoke College Library, which houses the Caroline Henderson papers (letters, essays, and articles by a woman who farmed throughout the Dust Bowl) was also an inspiration for the exhibit.

Farmer and sons walking in the face of a dust storm, 1936. Arthur Rothstein, photographer, courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.