FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 31, 2006
Contact: Sarah McGreer Hoyt
sarah@maaa.org

Farm Life: A Century of Change for Farm Families and Their Neighbors, which opened on December 15 at the Dacotah Prairie Museum in Aberdeen, South Dakota, is now on its way to the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum in Las Cruces, New Mexico, the second venue in its nationwide tour. This exhibition, which follows the progression of farming in the last 50 years, focuses on the social and cultural aspects of farming and the changes that are occurring in rural communities.

Farm Life is presented by NEH on the Road, which is a program division of Mid-America Arts Alliance, a non-profit regional arts organization. It is the fourth in a series of NEH on the Road exhibitions. This special initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) provides small and midsize museums with access to exhibitions that feature the best of contemporary humanities scholarship, collections, and exhibition design.

The starting place for Farm Life is a Wisconsin farmstead in the 1950s, but the exhibition features universal themes of family and community, touching on issues that will interest and engage today’s rural and urban viewers alike. The exhibition is divided into four sections representing the farmhouse, fields, barn, and gathering places in the community. In each section, photographs, objects, and labels tell the story of life on a farm. Through the exhibition's photography, visitors will witness milestones that occur as children grow up on a farm, such as a young boy learning how to feed a calf or a teenage girl learning how to drive the farm’s tractor.

The exhibition was originally developed by the Chippewa Valley Museum in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Farm Life will open at the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum on February 3, 2006 and will continue to show until March 2007 throughout the United States. For more information about this exhibition, contact Exhibitor Relations Coordinator Molly Alspaugh at molly@maaa.org.

The mission of Mid-America Arts Alliance is to enrich communities through cultural experiences. Founded in 1972, Mid-America Arts Alliance is a nonprofit regional arts organization based in Kansas City, Missouri. It is governed by a board of directors drawn from its partner states of Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas. Major support is for Mid-America Arts Alliance is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, participant state arts agencies, and leading foundations and corporations. For further information, visit the website at www.maaa.org.

Tour Schedule
To view the latest tour schedule, please visit the Farm Life web page at www.nehontheroad.org

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