IHS Explores Home Canning History
INDIANAPOLIS — The old-fashioned art of canning and preserving foods is enjoying new popularity and a new Indiana Historical Society exhibition is taking guests back to its Hoosier beginnings.
The newest Indiana Experience offering, You Are There 1948: Communities Can, explores the impact the Ball Brothers Company from Muncie had on the original food preservation movement across the United States.
Communities Can opens March 5, and runs through Aug. 12, 2017, at the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center, located at 450 W. Ohio St. in downtown Indianapolis.
With Communities Can, IHS invites guests to travel back in time to a canning center that existed on the grounds of the Ball Brothers Company in October 1948. The You Are There element of the Indiana Experience allows guests to step through – and into – a Minnetrista Heritage Collection photograph of the Muncie canning center projected onto a fine screen of mist.
Guests will enter a room where they will be invited to join the canning class, depicted in the photograph. They will meet a Ball Brothers Company employee, who will explain the process of canning, and a cast of women who have gathered to learn how to better preserve their family’s produce.
In addition, guests will be part of a discussion about significant issues affecting Hoosiers in the years immediately following World War II.
Outside the canning center, a supporting content room will focus on topics such as Ball Brothers Company history; World War II-era food preservation techniques and kitchens; seasonal food guides; and a resurgence in canning popularity.
You Are There 1948: Communities Can is presented by Ball Brothers Foundation, in partnership with Minnetrista. For more information on IHS or the Indiana Experience, call (317) 232-1882 or visit www.indianahistory.org.