In cooperation with The Smithsonian Institution, the South Dakota Humanities Council is sponsoring the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum on Main Street traveling exhibition, “Spark! Places of Innovation,” on tour from May 2024 to March 2025.

Spark! Places of Innovation explores the unique combination of places, people, and circumstances that sparks innovation and invention in rural communities. Technical, social, cultural, artistic, or a combination of all of these– every innovation is as unique as each community. Inspired by an exhibition by the National Museum of American History, the exhibition features stories gathered from diverse communities across the nation. Photographs, engaging interactives, objects, videos, and augmented reality bring a multilayered experience to reveal the leaders, challenges, successes, and future of innovation in each town.

Five venues have been chosen throughout South Dakota to host this traveling exhibition: Eagle Butte, Rapid City, Huron, Aberdeen, and Mission.

In each of the five Spark! tour locations, the host venues will contribute their own programming to give the exhibition a unique, locally-based context. While SDHC does provide financial assistance and logistical support to the venues at each Spark! tour site, the exhibit will be unique and representative of different themes across our state.

The entirety of the SPARK! Places of Innovation exhibition was translated into the Lakota language by three remarkable gentlemen: Alex Fire Thunder, Richard Two Dogs, and Robert Two Crow. The translated materials, which are also available in Spanish, are now a permanent component of the Smithsonian Institution’s exhibition tour. 

The South Dakota Humanities Council and the Smithsonian Institution are grateful to these gentlemen for their significant contribution to the exhibition and the preservation of the Lakota language.

There is so much to learn from the story of rural America!

The story of human history is written in inventions and innovations. People are problem- solvers. Sometimes we invent. More often, we innovate—we introduce a fresh idea or an invention into use in some way that creates a new way of doing or thinking.

Invention can happen anywhere and it’s happening right now in small towns across America. Rural Americans are creating new products, taking risks, meeting challenges together, and seizing upon exciting opportunities that change local life and sometimes reach far beyond.