The New WV State Museum - 22 films, 26 hours
Sign for the Matewan Massacre in the new WV State Museum
Adam Hodges of The WV Division of Culture & History was telling me a few facts about the new museum. 6000 items vs. 2000 in the old museum. It would take 26 hours to walk through the museum, watching all 22 film clips being shown in the space. I walked through it on Monday, not stopping to watch any of the films which I will some day. I was very impressed, after working in the Cultural Center for 30 years. Stan Bumgardner, the creative adviser, told me that computer stations will be added in the future, providing updated history.
He told me about 500 people a day have been touring the new museum. Closing time is 5 PM daily but they don’t let people in after 4:15 PM since it takes 45 minutes just to walk through it.
I was primarily interested in seeing how the museum treats WV labor history, being a board member of the WV Labor History Association. There is tons of it with lots of info on the Matewan Massacre, the Battle of Blair Mountain, and more.
I was very pleased to see a sign about the Belgian glassworkers who brought Socialism to the Mountain State in the early 1910s. There is a picture of Belgian glassworkers in South Charleston, 1910.
Ken Hechler spent a few minutes and thought it was “fantastic” and thought that the money spent on it was well spent. He saw the sign with his quote about the Farmington Mine Disaster in 1969. Stan Bumgardner told me that a film about the 1960s mentions that he was active in the anti-stripmining movement.
I have never been to Disneyland or Disneyworld but have been told that many of their exhibits involve films of some kind. I know that several of the workers, especially ones that created the artificial rocks, etc. at Disneyworld worked on this state museum. I bet the new museum is every bit as good as anything in Disneyworld!
August 5th, 2009 at
[…] Gary Simmons is one of the very first WV filmmakers I met when I came to Charleston in September 1978. He has been making films at least since then, making his own independent documentaries and films distributed by educational film companies including Cambridge Educational. He was the director of 18 of the 22 short films shown in the new WV State Museum. As I wrote earlier, if you watched every film, it would take 26 hours to see them all. […]