By Sam Cortes, Communications Coordinator
One of the best parts about the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame is that we have a museum where we get to showcase and celebrate so many interesting artefacts that tell some pretty cool stories about our athletes, teams, builders and coaches.
So, over the last year, we got together as a team, put our heads together and asked, what can we do to make our gallery experience even better?
This means making sure our artefacts stay in excellent condition and giving our audience a unique experience when they visit. So far, we have updated our HVAC system to help preserve our artefacts. Now, we are working on improving the visual experience.
New Decades Gallery Exhibit
With the pandemic continuing to impact our usual day-to-day lifestyle, we took the positive out of it and figured it was an excellent time to enhance the visitor experience. It does have its challenges though, as we decided to revamp our complete decades gallery.
“Generally, with exhibits, you are focusing on one topic,” said Angela, our Curator Assistant. “For this exhibit, though, we are covering sport from its earliest beginnings to the present and touching on a wide variety of sports. Since I am fairly new to the Sports Hall of Fame collection, this meant a crash course in learning about our Honoured Members and their stories.”
You can imagine then, that coordinating and putting together a complete gallery that will showcase sport in our province in an aesthetically pleasing manner takes time!
So,over these last few months, we have removed all of our artefacts in the decade gallery and are working on creating new audio/visuals for our visitors.
New Video Content
Gallery Coordinator Rich has put together a series of videos that will be accessible by QR code when visiting the gallery.
These QR codes will showcase our athletes doing what they love and provide some added information, so that you get the full story behind their success.
These videos paired with our amazing artefacts will give our visitors a better experience on their next visit.
Bringing More Stories to You
The sweat equity that goes into creating a new exhibit is not glamorous, but it sure is rewarding.
Speaking with Andrea, our Curator, this is what she had to say about what she finds rewarding in putting this exhibit together.
“I really enjoy bringing the stories of sport achievement to our audiences. I particularly like telling some of the less well known stories. Everyone knows about Bobby Hull and Dale Hawerchuk on the Jets or Clara Hughes winning six Olympic medals in both summer and winter events. But who knows as much about the 150 mile cycling races from Winnipeg to Kenora in the 1940s, or the Joey Johnson’s 4 medals at the Paralympics in Wheelchair Basketball? Sport has such an important role in our society, whether as participants or spectators. The role of sport goes right back to our roots as a province in 1870, and even earlier with the Indigenous communities and the early European settlers. It’s rewarding to bring a whole new set of stories and artefacts to the Decades Gallery Exhibit.”
The artefacts and stories we can tell are an important part of our history, and as we mentioned earlier, we have many of them!
As we continue on this path, giving a fresh new look to our exhibit, we look forward to the day we can welcome you back into the museum so you can learn more about our sports heritage.
