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B. Erin Cole

B. Erin Cole is an exhibit developer at the Minnesota Historical Society in St. Paul. Before that, she was the assistant state historian at the History Colorado Center in Denver. She also draws a lot of comics, and is working on a book-length graphic memoir about recovering from traumatic brain injury. She got her PhD in history at the University of New Mexico in 2014, and occasionally thinks about doing a comics version of her dissertation.

Field Trip

The Desert Keeps Receipts

By B. Erin Cole | October 8, 2020

We are immersed in a landscape of risk, a damaged place that damages in return.

Black text: "We make exhibits for VISITORS. Not historians, our museum peers, or ourselves.) My teams ask questions like: who is this exhibit for? What do these visitors want + need? How can we engage them and meet them where they are? So, who are visitors? (And what is an exhibit, anyway?) Drawing of an exhibit box, "I'm an exhibit, and I'm glad you asked! I'm a three-dimensional narrative environment! A story or argument you move through and interact with! That makes me very different from a book or a movie of a website! But I also wonder who comes to see me!"
Shorts

I Am A Historian I Make Exhibits

By B. Erin Cole | March 20, 2019

Who are museum exhibits for, and what difference does that make?

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