Have you any photographs, tools, folk art, clothing or other objects concerning migrant farm laborers that you can lend to Cornell University for a traveling exhibition? A team of museum professionals working with the Cornell Migrant Program is collecting materials for a 2,000-square-foot exhibition to inform general audiences about the historic and continuing use of migrant labor in the Northeast from a variety of perspectives.

The exhibition, "Coming Up On the Season," will explore the use of migrant labor for specific crops and regions of the Northeast as well as from the perspectives of migrants, former migrants, growers, wholesale buyers and retailers. Opening at the Hammond Museum in North Salem, N.Y., in October 2001, it will travel to five museum sites in the Northeast until December 2003.

But to help depict the lives of migrants, the exhibition needs contributions of all kinds, including tools such as onion toppers, blueberry rakes, cranberry scoops, broccoli knives, apple bags, and the boxes and crates that carry fruits and vegetables to market. It also needs personal articles of farm workers, including clothing (such as oilskin-covered pants with thick patches at the knees used to work in cranberry bogs in the 1930s or the layered clothing topped with black plastic bags used to cut the bite of icy winds in broccoli fields in northern Maine), mementos of home, art and crafts, letters, diaries and photographs.

"Except for some articles about housing conditions in migrant camps in the Northeast, migrant agricultural laborers in the East have scarcely come before the public eye," says Herb Engman, Director of the Cornell Migrant Program. The program focuses on training for migrant education and institutional changes to promote the health and well-being of migrant farm workers.

Migrants workers, who include domestic and offshore families, single men, "day haul" workers from nearby cities and workers housed for a season, have helped harvest crops in the Northeast for at least a century. "This project explores how changing consumer tastes, agricultural practices and demographics have affected the use of migrant farm workers in different parts of the region. It also constructs a profile of the people who come to work seasonally on the Northeast's farms and fields, what motivates their migration and what their lives are like at home and away from home," says exhibition director Linda Norris.

"Coming Up on the Season," which is supported with grants from the National Endowment of the Humanities and the New York State Council on the Arts, is the first exhibition to place the use of migrant agricultural labor in a regional and historical context. Based on extensive historic research and field work with migrants, growers, agricultural extension agents and others who work in the food distribution system between farms and supermarkets, the exhibition will bring the firsthand stories of migrants' work and lives to those who buy the products they tend and harvest. It will explore the meaning of migrant labor to growers and laborers alike, the relationship between migrant work in the northeastern U.S. and the workers' homes, attitudes about manual labor and the implications for Americans' growing preference for fresh foods.

Visitors to the exhibition will start with a foot pad that opens glass doors, similar to a supermarket's entrance. From an exhibit with migrant-picked crops, such as apples, cranberries, onions, celery and tobacco, visitors will move to a field-oriented exhibit that contains items related to migrants, growers, processors and distributors. They will then move to an area that describes how food-buyer preferences dictate what happens to commodities in trucks, warehouses and stores. The exhibition will include many recorded oral history interviews, interactive elements and video installations, as well as an illustrated book and accompanying programs.

To lend or donate items for the exhibition, contact exhibition director Linda Norris at (607) 829-3501 or via email at Hartynor@wpe.com.