Project Details

This inaugural exhibit for the Briscoe Center’s main gallery displays important artifacts from the Natchez Trace Collection, a nationally recognized academic resource for the history of the American South. The bold horizontal graphic of the exhibit takes its inspiration from the theme of the ‘trace’, an allusion to the historic route connecting Nashville, Tennessee with Natchez, Mississippi, and organizes the different historical narratives of the exhibit into a unified but various experiential path through the space. Featured at strategic points along the trace are historical documents, artifacts, and popular media describing the historical development of the South with an emphasis on slavery, the agricultural economy based on cotton, and the Civil War and its’ aftermath. Large scale graphic reproductions intermittently punctuate the trace to subdivide zones while enlarging critical historical artifacts documenting the lives of enslaved people, free people of color, and the white elite. McKinney York’s scope of design/build services included exhibit planning and creative development, conceptual design, and graphic design.