Exhibition opening Saturday in Anadarko highlights the importance of voting

ANADARKO — Voting always is important, but in a presidential election year, it takes on a new level of meaning.

That’s the message the Museum on Main Street exhibition Voices and Votes: Democracy in America, hopes to convey during the six weeks it is on display at Anadarko Community Library. Organizers said the collaborative effort between the Smithsonian Institution and the State Humanities Councils is intended to be a springboard into questions about voting, from who has the right to vote to whose voices will be heard. It will use historical and contemporary photographs, video, interactive displays and the voices of actual Americans to convey the critical importance of voting.

Teresa Ferguson, Anadarko Community Library director, agrees the exhibit has special importance this year, but the importance of voting in general is why local residents worked with state officials to make Anadarko’s library one of the rural Oklahoma settings the Smithsonian Institution selected for Voices and Votes.

Ferguson said the effort started in early 2023 under former Anadarko library director Courtney Mayall (now with the Oklahoma Department of Libraries) and Oklahoma Humanities program director Rayne McKinney. The Smithsonian Institution was contacting rural cities about its new exhibition, with a goal of selecting six in Oklahoma to host Voices and Votes. Anadarko Mayor Kelley McGlothlin asked Mayall if she would be interested in putting her library’s name forward for what supporters also say is an opportunity to showcase host cities.

Fast forward to Summer 2023, when representatives of the Oklahoma Humanities and Smithsonian took day-long tours of communities in Oklahoma, including Anadarko.

“That’s why we’re here,” Ferguson said, of an announcement that came in November 2023.

Ferguson joined the effort in early 2024, after Mayall left for a new job. She quickly became immersed in the effort, explaining she spent time in Nowata helping to assemble exhibition pieces there, so she could help coordinate the effort when the exhibition’s pieces arrived in Anadarko mid-week to be assembled.

She said the Smithsonian has done its research, explaining when you ask someone What is democracy, “90 percent of people will say voting.” But, that’s not the complete story.

“Democracy is everyone’s right to vote, and the right to not vote,” she said, adding that voting is important because “you need to speak up if you want changes made. It really does matter. If enough people vote, changes will happen.”

That’s a key point the exhibition tries to make, she said, of displays designed for adults and older youth. The exhibition features six large pieces (7 feet high, 7-8 feet wide) with all kinds of information, and the major pieces are interactive. Ferguson said the first piece is the best one because its center features a copy of the Declaration of Independence.

“The way it’s portrayed, the colors, it gives you goose bumps,” she said.

It also gives viewers a look at history, she said, explaining she thinks about the fact that those who signed the Declaration of Independence took a leap of faith that what they were doing would work.

“You know they had to be scared, but it worked,” she said of democracy.

Other highlights include key struggles in the right to vote, including efforts that gave that right to blacks and women. Displays also use the voices of real people to convey the importance of voting.

“There are so many stories of actual people like us, telling what they believe about democracy, what their beliefs are,” she said. “it’s a remarkable thing to see, starting at 1776 and going forward.”