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For my internship with Oak Ridge National Historical Park, I curated a photo exhibition with interpretive labels on recreation and welfare in Oak Ridge during World War II. I chose 16 photos from an online archive of over 2000 total photographs taken by Ed Westcott between 1945 and 1948. I worked with park rangers and members of the community to research the people and places that appeared in some of the more relevant photographs in order to provide a more in depth look at recreation in the Secret City. I made a conscious effort to include as many relevant photos of African Americans in the exhibit as I could because their work in Oak Ridge is often overlooked or erased and many of their photos were deemed unimportant by the Department of Energy and not archived with the rest. The exhibition will be displayed at the Oak Ridge Children’s Museum which serves as the headquarters for the Historical Park.
I was also given the opportunity to tour behind the fence sites that are not open to the public to learn more about the history of the work done in the city during the war and the current efforts to preserve the history and make it more accessible to the public. I also attended several meetings with the staff of the Historical Park as well as the entire staff of all three locations that make up the Manhattan Project, Oak Ridge TN, Los Alamos NM, and Hanford WA in order tolearn more about the function of the park as a whole vs the individual locations.
Throughout the internship I assisted in taking down, putting up, and changing hardwarefor existing photo exhibits on a variety of topics related to the Secret City as they were cycledthrough the several buildings in the community who display them. Some of these topics included the women working in Oak Ridge, the African American community in the city during WWII, and for existing photo exhibits on a variety of topics related to the Secret City as they were cycled through the several buildings in the community who display them. Some of these topics included the women working in Oak Ridge, the African American community in the city during WWII, and Oak Ridge’s involvement in the cold war.
—Finn Thornton, UD Class of 2026
