Mt. Zion Black Cultural Center Exhibits
The Mount Zion Black Cultural Center Exhibits are a dynamic platform for uplifting Black voices, preserving history, and telling a whole story. The ongoing acts of research and archiving parallel the sharing of historic and personal stories of the Athens community and beyond.
A Landmark of Resilience
The Mount Zion Baptist Church in Athens, Ohio, stands as a profound historical landmark, built by free-born and formerly enslaved Black artisans. It once served as an indispensable anchor for the Black community in Appalachia, a place of gathering, spiritual solace, and communal strength. The core mission of this project, undertaken in collaboration with the Mt. Zion Baptist Church Preservation Society and Hardlines Design Company, is to revitalize this landmark through preservation, rehabilitation, and adaptive reuse. Following the 2020 Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design (CIRD) plan for the cultural hub, To Be Done Studio was tasked with designing exhibits throughout the building, transforming the historic church into a vibrant, living archive, a container of oral histories and place for storytelling.
A Collaborative, Place-Based Process
The revitalization of the Mount Zion Baptist Church was a deeply collaborative effort, integrating extensive community input into every facet of the project. To Be Done Studio visited various sites in and around Athens, Ohio including the Tablertown People of Color Museum, the Multicultural Genealogical Center, and the historic Kincaid Cave. These places and their stories inspired the design for an immersive storytelling exhibit. Through participatory workshops, it became apparent that the Mount Zion Black Cultural Center aspires to create a multi-sensory, dynamic and accessible environment that allows for future exhibits, educational opportunities, and oral histories to unfold.
Designing for Storytelling
The exhibit design intent revolves around creating a multi-functional space that respects the building's profound history while enabling its future as a dynamic community asset. A visitor will experience the space through three modes:
- Immersive Interactive mode: a theatrical experience through film and live storytelling;
- Passive Exploratory mode, an unstructured experience of a meandering exhibit; and
- Archivist Guide, which highlights the building’s history through traces of the church preserved as “thumbprints”.
This exhibit is designed to tell the still-unfolding history of the area, the church, and the people who built it, with many narratives being discovered and preserved through ongoing archival efforts.
A key feature of the Immersive Interactive mode is a flexible scrim system with film projections and complimented with theatrical lighting, to bring a dynamic storytelling experience to life. This innovative design element will create opportunities to draw the audience deeper into the historical context, simulating different atmospheres within the church's main sanctuary. The integration of preservation techniques with innovative design ensures that the Mount Zion Baptist Church will not only stand as a tangible testament to its past, but will also serve as a dynamic and uplifting force, fostering cultural pride and economic opportunity for its community's future.
Building on the foundation of the initial CIRD project, the Mount Zion Black Cultural Center exhibits share the story of Athens and its founders with the local community, university students, and visitors alike. While research, documentation, and the development of a living archive are ongoing, this emerging exhibit honors the Church’s legacy, meeting a history of injustice and adversity with resilience and the collective power of knowledge and creation.
