MGG Exhibit Facts

The exhibition is organized into several major thematic areas: Growing Up; Heading Off to War; The Home Front; The Battlefront; Moving Out and Making the Boom; The Whole World; and, a concluding section honoring the legacy of this generation. Visitors to the exhibition will encounter iconic artifacts and experiences including:

• A re-created 1930s movie theater with clips from films popular with kids during the era and stories about movie-going.
• Artifacts and stories from the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps.
• A homemade "car" from the 1938 St. Paul Soap Box Derby.
• A classic soda fountain from the 1930s with a vintage pinball machine that visitors can play and jukebox where they will hear stories of carefree teenage lives interrupted by the events of December 7, 1941.
• A "home front" setting where visitors will be able to recycle aluminum and experience what rationing was like.
• An interactive "bullet-packing" station where visitors will be able to pack ammunition shells on a re-created factory assembly line based on the Twin Cities Ordnance Plant.
• An M8 armored vehicle produced during the war by workers at the St. Paul Ford plant.
• The fuselage of an actual war-era C-47 troop transport aircraft where visitors are transported into the harrowing experience of a D-Day flight through a realistic multimedia presentation.
• A Combat Stories audio feature where visitors will hear compelling stories told by Minnesota men and women who experienced the war on the front lines.
• Stories and objects from the Military Intelligence Service Language School at Ft. Snelling where Japanese-American soldiers trained for work in wartime intelligence.
• Stories and objects from the University of Minnesota’s "semi-starvation" study in which conscientious objectors volunteered to be "guinea pigs" in a wartime project studying the effects of malnutrition.
• A 1950s television showroom with clips from popular shows of TV’s pioneer days and the KSTP Archives housed at the Minnesota Historical Society, as well as an interactive area where kids can test TV tubes to see if they are faulty.
• An iconic "St. Paul Tourist Cabins" neon sign.
• A 1950s-era hospital nursery with an "endless babies" vista.
• A 1955 Ford nicknamed "the Bluebird" by its original owners in Clinton, Minn.
• A dry-cleaning shop with a moving rack of clothes highlighting the activities of this "generation of joiners."
• A 1960s airport setting recalling the global reach and work of men and women of this generation from Washington, D.C., to the State Department and the United Nations.
• A multimedia show that will remind visitors of the life arc and profoundly important legacy of this "greatest generation."