2025-2026 Exhibition Tour

Museum on Main Street brings high-quality Smithsonian traveling exhibitions to Main Street museums, historical societies, and other small-town cultural venues across the country. These exhibits boost civic pride, as residents young and old, from diverse backgrounds come together to share and celebrate their heritage. Host venues are selected through a competitive application and awarded to communities as a cohort that will work and train together over the next year, leading up to opening day at the first venue.

Hopeful. Participatory. Community-building.

Through a year-long engagement before the Smithsonian exhibition arrives, six Maryland communities will explore their story of innovation. Spark! will be the springboard for diverse local programming in the humanities, sciences, and arts. Visitors will be inspired to learn about how innovation has shaped their own communities and how they maybe innovators themselves. This exhibition will be an opportunity for community members to come together in conversation around their community’s history, present, and future with innovation.

Sites selected to host the SPARK! exhibition will:

• Assign two project coordinators for the exhibition who will attend planning meetings and work together coordinate the project from beginning to end
• Implement publicity in your local community and region in cooperation with Maryland Humanities
• Produce a local companion exhibition and host public humanities programs
• Host a grand opening/ribbon cutting and invite public officials, media, legislators, congressional representatives, and others
• Provide a cost share report at the project’s conclusion tracking all staff and volunteer time, facility expenses, and other donated resources
• Provide a secure, dry space to store empty exhibition crates for the duration of the exhibition.
• Engage in cooperative publicity
• Contribute hard work and some out-of-pocket expenses

Spark! Places of Innovation will highlight innovation in rural America from the perspective of the people who lived it! Their words, images, and experiences gathered through an ambitious crowdsourcing initiative will be the heartbeat of the exhibition. Technical, social, cultural, artistic, or a combination of all of these– every innovation is as unique as each community. Explore the diversity, ingenuity, and tenacity of rural Americans in Spark! Places of Innovation.

Spark! Places of Innovation explores the unique combination of places, people, and circumstances that sparks innovation and invention in rural communities. Inspired by an exhibition by the National Museum of American History, the exhibition features stories gathered from diverse communities across the nation. Photographs, engaging interactives, objects, videos, and augmented reality bring a multilayered experience to reveal the leaders, challenges, successes, and future of innovation in each town.

Spark! Places of Innovation will be the springboard for diverse local programming in the humanities, sciences, and arts. Visitors will be inspired to learn about innovation has shaped their own communities and how they may be innovators themselves. Community members will come together in conversation about their history, present, and future.