You are invited to experience history in a new light.
Sourced from The Daily News Journal and The Murfreesboro Union collections at the Rutherford County Archive, this exhibition transforms vintage advertisements into powerful new narratives through painting, fiber arts, mixed media, and video installations.
Artists Frank Baugh, Chrissy Crater, Kelly Herbert, Devin Lamp, Victoria Richardson, and Hannah Weakley recontextualize archival fragments to reveal new meanings, examining everyday imagery and commercial design as mirrors of shifting ideas about identity, community, and cultural values. Each work blends memory, imagination, and aesthetics to breathe new life into the past.
The exhibition also features pieces created in archival arts workshops across schools and libraries, highlighting the power of collective storytelling and creative engagement with local history. Together, these works remind us that archives are not static records of the past but dynamic resources for questioning history, generating new narratives, and envisioning different futures.
Archives aren’t shelves for yesterday; they’re
springboards for tomorrow.
Art in the Archive, Buttons, Kelly Herbert
On the Campus of MTSU
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