Muncie celebrated its 150th birthday this year, and Ball State has joined in the celebration with an exhibit at Bracken Library that covers Muncie's time as a city.
The Archives and Special Collections at Bracken put together the exhibit, titled “From Magic City to Middletown: 150 Years of Muncie History,” which will be on display until Sept. 30.
The artifacts are split up into six display cases, organized by category. The categories come from the Middletown Studies, a study in the 1920s that analyzed Muncie as a representative American community. Artifacts displayed range from Muncie’s gas boom era in the late 1800s through the present year.
Becky Marangelli, archives specialist at Bracken, coordinated the exhibit, along with a group of graduate assistants and student workers. Marangelli said she enjoyed looking through the archives collection, but found it hard to condense the material.
“The biggest challenge that we faced putting this exhibit together was ... covering 150 years of history,” Marangelli said. “How do you fully represent Muncie’s 150 years in six or eight display cases? That’s not a lot of space to tell the whole story of Muncie and to put all of the most interesting things that we have.”
Emily Rapoza, a graduate assistant who worked on one of the displays, said the team looked at the Gas Boom in the late 1880s as being the real beginning of Muncie’s history. This is a time when natural gas brought manufacturing companies to the area and grew the population.
The reception for this exhibit took place Aug. 6 at Bracken Library. Ball State President Paul W. Ferguson and Muncie Mayor Dennis Tyler both spoke at the reception.
“The Ball State-Muncie connection is very special,” Ferguson said. “I think that we really want to celebrate that. I hope you see that in this particular demonstration and exhibit — the celebration of what Muncie and Delaware County is in East Central Indiana and how much happened.”
The exhibit, which opened July 6, is located on the second floor of Bracken Library in the Archives and Special Collections section.
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