Museum in the Park at Chief Logan State Park will sponsor a Frontier Days Weekend on Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 7 - 8. Activities will take place from 10 a.m. - 6 p.m., on Saturday and 1 - 6 p.m., on Sunday. The event is free and the public is invited to attend.
Local and regional reenactors will create an encampment on the Museum’s grounds and demonstrate different techniques used by settlers to survive and be comfortable in early America. Visitors can learn about candle dipping, needle crafts, calligraphy, origami, basket weaving, blacksmithing and gunsmithing, leather working, horn and woodcarving, flint knapping and making tools, spinning and weaving, and various techniques for gathering, preparing and storing food.
Reenactor Henry Tucker will share stories about the life of a pioneer scout and will tan a deer hide using traditional techniques. A frontier apothecary also will be open for visitors to learn about native plants, roots and herbs used to cure various ailments.
In addition, on Saturday, visitors can observe craft demonstrations at the campsites from 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.; special kids’ arts and crafts activities from 11 a.m. - 2 p.m.; and opportunities for kids nine years old or more to fire a cannon or flintlock from noon - 4 p.m.
On Sunday, the cannon and flintlock firings and kids’ arts and crafts activities will take place from 1 - 3 p.m., and craft demonstrations at the campsites can be seen from 1 - 5 p.m.
Visitors also are encouraged to tour the current exhibits at the Museum, including the newly-installed Thorney Lieberman: Honoring America’s Coal Miners, featuring life-size, full-length photographs of coal miners by Thorney Lieberman of Charleston. The exhibit consists of 18 full-size portraits. Lieberman took between 30 to 40 photographs of each miner and put them in a grid, life-size, on eight-inch by 10-inch film covering the entire person. He then made contact prints from the negatives and assembled them to create a full-size person. Most of these portraits were developed in black and white and mounted on 16 gauge hot rolled steel sheets. The final images are almost seven-feet tall.
Lieberman says the goal of his project was to “ . . . put a human face on the energy issue by creating a collection of life-size photographs of American coal miners, suitable for museum exhibition. These monumental portraits reveal the human essence of the coal industry and their exhibition will celebrate and honor these men and women as contemporary American heroes.”
Lieberman has been a professional photographer for more than 40 years. After receiving his bachelor of arts degree from Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., he taught photography at the Parsons School of Design in New York for three years. He also was actively taking architectural photographs, and was the principal photographer for I. M. Pei and Partners from 1970 - 1991. Other clients include Richard Meier, Philip Johnson, New York Landmarks Conservancy and Committee to Save Grand Central, among others. A book of his photographs of New York City entitled Manhattan Lightscape (Abbeville Press, 1990) capped his career as a master architectural photographer and is still in print.
The coal miner series is not Lieberman’s first venture into life-size photographic images. He also created a series entitled The People, which features full-size Native Americans in ceremonial regalia. That show has been on display at the Rockwell Museum of Western Art in Corning, N.Y. and Museum of World Culture in Frankfurt, Germany. In addition, the Native American photographs are archived in tribal museums and cultural centers throughout the country.
Lieberman’s work is included internationally in museum, corporate and private collections. He won a Governor’s Award and a Merit Award in the Division of Culture and History’s West Virginia Juried Exhibition 2007 for two of his coal miner portraits. He also had a major retrospective of his work entitled Several Arguments with Photography 1968 - 2008 last year at the Huntington Museum of Art as part of its Walter Gropius Master Art series.
Other exhibits on display include Riding the Rails: Railroads Connecting West Virginia, which details railroad development in West Virginia and has artifacts from the West Virginia State Museum collection such as a C&O Adlake Kero Lantern, a C&O Yellow Dog Lamp which burned on waste oil, and claw hammers, to name a few; We Are Marshall, which displays items produced as props for the movie production; Dehue . . . A Special Place which examines aspects of coal camp life; Black Diamonds takes a look at coal mining throughout West Virginia with an emphasis on the southern part of the state; Practicing Medicine, an exhibit of medical furnishings, equipment and supplies from the State Museum collection; and Meadow River Lumber of Rainelle: an Appalachian Company and Community, the story of one of West Virginia’s largest lumber companies which operated from 1910 to 1970 in Greenbrier County. There are also two quilts made by the late Katie Barnett of Logan and award winners from the West Virginia Juried Exhibitions from 1968 - 2007 on display.
For more information about Frontier Days Weekend, contact Elizabeth Williams, site manager at the Museum in the Park, at (304) 792-7229.
Museum in the Park is a regional cultural center showcasing the best in West Virginia history and the arts. It features chancing exhibits and displays of artwork and historical items from the collections of the West Virginia State Museum and the State Archives. One area of the museum is dedicated to local and regional history. It is operated and maintained by the West Virginia Division of Culture and History and is located four miles north of Logan on West Virginia Route 10 at chief Logan State Park. The museum is open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. - 6 p.m., and Sunday from 1 - 6 p.m.
The West Virginia Division of Culture and History, an agency of the West Virginia Department of Education and the Arts, brings together the state’s past, present and future through programs and services in the areas of archives and history, the arts, historic preservation and museums. Its administrative offices are located at the Culture Center in the State Capitol Complex in Charleston, which also houses the state archives and state museum. The Culture Center is West Virginia’s official showcase for the arts. The agency also operates a network of museums and historic sites across the state. For more information about the Division’s programs, visit www.wvculture.org. The Division of Culture and History is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.
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