Behind the Glass: Building 3-D displays for the State Fair exhibit

This blog is part of a series of posts featuring stories from the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) exhibit “A Fair to Remember: The History of the North Carolina State Fair.” The exhibit opened in the D.H. Hill Jr. Library’s exhibit gallery March 27, 2025. The exhibit curator is Public History MA student Karina Burbank, and the exhibit designer is Conservation Services Manager Emily Schmidt.

There’s a fresh exhibit up in D.H. Hill and Preservation was called upon again to get creative with the challenges of displaying physical and 3-dimensional objects. You can read about last year’s process here.

This year I had the added role of exhibit designer, which means that exhibit curator Karina Burbank and I were the ones creating the very problems that we eventually needed to solve. It was a balancing act between including content that told the story, being bold with design, and facing the practicality of those decisions.

To illustrate the earliest history of the fair, Karina had a vision of a stack of newspapers with a front page announcing the fair from The News and Observer in 1898. I happen to be a huge fan of the 1992 movie Newsies, so I was on board immediately. Our friends in Access Services kindly saved some newspapers that were on their way to recycling. These served as the guts of the paper stack and I printed the 1898 front page onto our stash of newsprint. A string to tie them sealed the deal. From a Preservation standpoint, it will be interesting to see how much they discolor from the lights over the next year.

Our Preservation Librarian, Jamie Bradway, reviews all collection objects selected for the exhibit to make sure they are stable enough to be displayed. Objects in the red part of the color spectrum are more prone to discoloration when exposed to light for an extended period of time. This year Jamie tested a product new to us - a UV filtering acrylic. Because the vulnerable objects were flat, Jamie could cut the acrylic to fit, then mount it in front of them. The acrylic is glare free, so it doesn’t distract from the object. Jamie will monitor these items over the next year to make sure they are safe from fading.

One of these red objects was a ribbon in a group of four from the “Student Agricultural Fair.” Jamie handcrafted hooks to attach to the back panel so the ribbons could hang in place, including a UV acrylic cover for the red ribbon. He prepared a template to perfectly place holes for the hooks on the panel during installation with no stress.

The center two cases in the exhibit gallery are tricky. We want them to be visually compelling since they can be seen as you approach the gallery, and they call for something 3-dimensional to do that job.

We wanted to include a model of Dorton Arena, the iconic symbol of the state fairgrounds, but the model we have in Special Collections is far too large to display in the gallery space. So we turned to our friends Justin Haynes and Colin Keenan in the MakerSpace to create a 3-D scan and print of the building. You can read more about their process of creating that model here.

We have these amazing drawings by Matthew Nowicki, the architect of Dorton arena. They were plans he had for the fairgrounds that never came to fruition due to his untimely death in a plane crash in 1950.

We decided these could accompany the 3-D model, but how could we make the flat drawings more dynamic and 3-dimensional? I started playing with layouts that might work and landed on a raised display that would show off as many drawings as we could at an angle, while also providing a contextual space for the Dorton model to sit. And we could dedicate the second center case to Dorton itself.

I liked this plan in theory, but would it actually work? Before I committed, I built a real-life mockup to know for sure.

When our final panels arrived it was time to construct it for real. Using the bottom panel from last year’s exhibit as a base and a wall to find the correct angle, I positioned the side pieces, then attached them with hot glue and 20-point board. I was then able to measure the space for the corner pieces, cut and attach them. For all the points of contact, I removed some of the foam board so there was space to make the angle.

For the second center panel featuring the Dorton Arena, I designed two angled pieces with triangular sides. After lots of trial and error to connect the two panels at the top, the seam was still…well, unseemly.

I wanted to cover it up, but with what? I didn’t want to detract from the panel itself with something that stood out. Luckily, I had leftover material from the side panels that matched perfectly. If I cut strips into it, I could pull the printed vinyl surface away from the foam board and essentially use it as a tape to cover all the seams. Such a satisfying solution.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this behind the scenes look at how things were constructed and protected in this year’s exhibit. It will be available to view again when D.H. Hill Jr. Library is reopened after this summer’s closure and up until Spring 2026.

The D. H. Hill Jr. Library will be closed beginning on Monday, May 5, 2025, for planned electrical work. The Special Collections Research Center is located in Hill Library, and will be closed for all appointments during this period. Special Collections can only make appointment requests after August 3, 2025. During the closure, Special Collections staff will be available to answer questions about our collections, if they are accessible, and to support researchers using digital materials for their research. Some materials will not be available for reproduction requests. Please contact us!