Dust, Drought, and Dreams Gone Dry exhibit opens

On Saturday, March 26, the Pawnee Bill Ranch and Museum will have the exhibit Dust, Drought, and Dreams Gone Dry on display until Sunday, May 8, 2022.

The traveling exhibition features twenty colorful, illustrated panels about the Plains area before, during, and after the Dust Bowl occurred. The exhibit will use images and quotations from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, memories of the Dust Bowl from oral histories and writing, and recent scholarly analysis. QR codes on the panels lead to selections from the OSU oral histories, the writings of Caroline Henderson, and other primary sources.

Dust, Drought, and Dreams Gone Dry was 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. Some of the exhibit is from the Oklahoma State University library and features their Women of the Dust Bowl 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) were also an inspiration for the exhibit.

This exhibit is taking place in conjunction with the Smithsonian Institution Museum on Main Street’s traveling exhibition Crossroads: Change in Rural America. It will be on display in the historic Big Barn at Pawnee Bill Ranch and Museum from March 26 to May 7. 2022.

Detail of photograph of Arthur Coble and young sons returning to their farm work after meeting with Dust Bowl photographer, Arthur Rothstein, 1936.