Diving into the archives for five months at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College has paid off for ABAC’s Georgia Museum of Agriculture and Curator Polly Huff.

At its recent annual meeting, the Georgia Association for Museums and Galleries (GAMG) presented ABAC with the top award in the Special Project Category and the Multimedia Project of the Year. 

ABAC won the top prizes for “An Overhaul of 110 Years of College Archives” in the Special Project Category and “Fridays with the Curator” as the first ever Multimedia Project of the Year.  Huff directed both projects.  She was assisted on the archives project by two student interns, Britt Fuller and Will Hunnicutt, who both majored in Rural Studies. 

“For five months, Britt, Will, and I sorted through hundreds of boxes of ABAC institutional archives,” Huff said.  “Then we organized, cataloged, and stabilized them with proper care and archival supplies before packaging them for storage while the Carlton Center is undergoing renovation.”

The Special Project Award recognizes outstanding achievement on a project other than static exhibits, completed by the institutions, friends, and supporters of the GAMG.  Huff said the awards committee noted that “this enormous undertaking by the ABAC archives team was worthy of recognition, and was a testament to the dedication, perseverance, and resourcefulness of the project's staff,” according to Christy Crisp of the Georgia Historical Society, who served as the 2018 Awards Committee Chair.

“The archival project was recognized last fall by the Georgia Historical Records Advisory Council, so we are very pleased to be singled out again,” Huff said.  “These museum and gallery industry awards highlight the best museum and gallery initiatives statewide for the past year.”

Huff initiated the “Fridays with the Curator” series in 2017 with technical assistance from the Museum’s marketing staff.  Since then, the series has spotlighted significant artifacts, exhibits, and restorations in the Museum’s gallery and the agricultural collection via innovative use of audio and video presentations.

Multiple research articles written by Huff supported the series and added educational value to its content. In 2017, local educators and students in their classes in Tift County utilized the series for weekly “guess this artifact” Facebook posts. The posts were interactive and solicited guesses from the Museum’s online community.  The posts were followed by articles featuring a “reveal” for each mystery artifact.

“Fridays with the Curator” went viral in the fall of 2018 when Huff and a team of restoration staff and Georgia Forestry rangers participated in two turpentining trips. The team participated in two different styles of turpentining, contemporary(mechanized) and old-fashioned (using early 1900s hand tools). 

“Diary and video documentaries chronicled both trips and the methods utilized,” Huff said. “Those posts caused views and shares to jump by several thousand percent. Since then, the series has continued to showcase significant and rare artifacts and has engaged the Museum’s online community in an educational dialogue about them, prompting the sharing of many personal stories.”

According to the awards committee, “Fridays with the Curator” was “recognized for an outstanding achievement in this brand-new category of unorthodox, interactive exhibitions.” Crisp said the committee believed, “This program has continued to improve since inception. Particularly interesting was the use of Facebook videos to expand the project's (and therefore the Museum's) reach.”

Huff said the stabilized ABAC archives will be made available to the campus community and to outside researchers upon completion of the Carlton Center renovation in 2020.  “Fridays with the Curator” appears monthly on the Georgia Museum of Agriculture’s Facebook page.

Approximately 200 museum and gallery professionals from across the state attended the GAMG conference and ceremony.  Huff serves on the GAMG Board of Directors, chairs the membership committee, and is a member of the legislative group and the grants committee.  She is also a frequent panelist on the GAMG Curators’ Round Table.