Two of our Public History graduate students and Archives student workers, Victoria Penno and Karis Raeburn, recently completed a new semi-permanent exhibit pairing model airplanes with photographs and historical information about the models’ real-life counterparts.
The exhibit, which can be seen on the fourth floor of the Dunbar Library, includes many planes you have probably heard of—like the C-5 Galaxy, SR-71A Blackbird, and C-130H—and others you may not have, like the YF-16.
The students researched and located original photographs for each airplane included in the exhibit. Most of the photographs used in the exhibit came from the Art Krieger Aviation Collection (MS-225).
Originally, these model airplanes were displayed on top of some of our shelving in the reading room:
But after our reading room remodel this past summer, the model airplanes no longer had a home. One of our archivists, John Armstrong, thought we ought to give the models a new lease on life, so he asked Karis and Victoria to develop an aviation exhibit using the planes, which they did!