Officials expect to open museum soon
By SCOTT POWELL Ledger Staff Writer spowell@gaffneyledger.com

Designers from The History Workshop deliver exhibit panels to the Cherokee County History and Arts Museum. Exhibits are now being installed and the facility is expected to open soon.

For 18 months, Carol Poplin has been involved in the delicate challenge of condensing years of Cherokee County history into a readable format for museum exhibits.

The Mt. Pleasant resident patiently spent time working with graphic artists, printers and historians in designing 10 exhibits for the Cherokee County History and Arts Museum that will highlight Cherokee County history.

Poplin is the senior project manager for The History Workshop, the division of Brockington and Associates in Atlanta hired in May of 2007 by CHAPS (Cherokee Historical and Preservation Society) to work on the county museum project.

The museum has been in the planning stages since 2000.

Poplin joined several History Workshop employees Monday to begin the first major exhibit installation. The permanent exhibits mix historical text with interactive features such as question and answer sections aimed at engaging the interest of persons of all ages.

"This has been a fun challenge to tell so many stories from Cherokee County history while covering a time period of 10,000 years," Poplin said. "We took a broad spectrum of subjects and condensed it into exhibits with text and graphics that are highly readable."

Exhibits will cover the county's involvement with the American Revolutionary War, Native Americans, rural life in Cherokee County and geology features that played a role in the development of the county. Additional exhibits will be set up over the next couple of weeks leading to the museum opening date, which has not been announced.

The History Workshop is a cultural resource management firm that has done work in the areas of archaeology, research on cemetery plots and designs and builds museum exhibits. The company recently finished an exhibit and video documentary chronicling the restoration of the Charleston City Hall. It is currently working on a sports museum project.

The exhibits for the Cherokee County history museum were developed through close cooperation with museum director Billy Pennington and consultations with local historians.

The interpretive text for the exhibits and graphics have been carefully designed and proofread for accuracy, Poplin said. The exhibits were printed in large sections and then disassembled for transportation to the county museum.

"Billy Pennington's background as a high school history teacher has really been valuable in guiding the content for the exhibits and presenting the material so it is accessible to people of all ages," Poplin said.