For several years, Capitol visitors have been treated to some amazing exhibits in our front lobby, courtesy of our talented and creative Legacy Washington team.

The latest is “Korea 65: The Forgotten War Remembered.” The exhibit, along with a series of online profiles, focuses on Washingtonians who experienced the Korean War in different ways, from U.S. soldiers who fought in the war to Korean-Americans who grew up in Korea during or after the war.

Ever wonder how an exhibit actually goes up? This video shows how Laurie Mott and Amber Raney from our Legacy Washington team installed the Korea 65 exhibit during one week in August, culminating months of meetings and planning.

If you think it’s quick and easy to put up a bunch of exhibit panels on walls, think again.

“Exhibits typically take between a week to two weeks to set up, depending on all the pieces and parts that go with the exhibit,” said Mott, who led the exhibit installation. “Many times we design the exhibit to look fantastic on the computer screen and have to deal with issues that arise (that we might not have thought of) once the physical pieces arrive that sometimes take a little creative finagling to solve.”

Raney said the installation process sometimes requires improvising in the middle of the project.

“Sometimes the ways in which we envision the pieces hanging don’t always work in practice, and we have to improvise,” Raney said. “This exhibit, especially, presented some challenges in getting the walls to come together. The intro wall, while it turned out great, caused me a lot of heartburn and required an extra trip to the hardware store! Most of the other challenges involve keeping the panels on the walls without doing damage to either. These exhibits will travel, and so we also need to be able to take them down.”

Mott said exhibit planning is a lengthy process.

“When we start a project, we do a lot of brainstorming and throw everything out on the table and slowly piece together a theme, design and color scheme,” Mott said. “We started the Korea 65 project in the fall of 2016 but probably didn’t have a solid design until spring of 2017. Much of that time is spent researching and understanding our subjects, the issue at hand and trying to fold in various design elements that coincide with the two.”

If you haven’t seen the Korea exhibit yet, it will be available for viewing in our front lobby until July 2018.