Smithsonian Exhibition: Spark! Places of Innovation Grand Opening

“Spark! Places of Innovation” Grand Opening Celebration

Food truck from The Old Crow on site from 1-4 pm.

Concert with local musicians in the Terracotta Room from 2-4 pm.

The concert features musicians that have performed the longest in our Music in the Stacks Concert Series at the library- Gary Simpkins, Mike McReynolds, Tony Cook, Mark Gifford, and Matt Fabritz.  

The exhibition examining the ingenuity and tenacity of rural America opens at Camp Verde Community Library, on Saturday, June 14^th. “Spark!” will be on view through Saturday, July 26th. 

Camp Verde Community Library and the surrounding community has been chosen by Arizona Humanities to host “Spark!” as part of the Museum on Main Street program—a national/state/local partnership to bring exhibitions and programs to rural cultural organizations. The exhibition will tour six communities in Arizona from June 14^th, 2025, through March 28^th, 2026.  

“Spark! Places of Innovation” highlights innovation in rural America from the perspective of the people who lived it. The exhibition features stories and images from over 30 communities across the nation gathered through a crowdsourcing initiative. These places of innovation examined their existing assets, characteristics, people, resources and history to tackle the challenges of today with creative solutions and chart new directions for their future.

Through photographs, hands-on interactives, objects and videos, “Spark!” reveals the leaders, challenges, successes and future of innovation in each featured town.  

For ‘Spark!’, Camp Verde Community Library has partnered with the Verde Valley Science Vortex, whose mission is to positively impact children’s critical-thinking abilities, creativity, and STEM literacy. This partnership allows the library to showcase hands-on, interactive pieces from the Science Vortex to complement the Smithsonian exhibit.

Spark! Places of Innovation has been made possible in Camp Verde, AZ by Arizona Humanities.  

Spark! is a Museum on Main Street exhibition developed by the Smithsonian Institution. It is inspired by Places of Invention, an exhibition developed by the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation.  

Museum on Main Street is a collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution and State Humanities Councils nationwide that serves the small-town cultural organizations and citizens of rural America.  

This project is sponsored in-part by the ASU College of Liberal Arts and Sciences – Humanities Division and the Community Foundation of Southern Arizona