Pulp Culture: Recognizing the Shared Cultural Legacy of an Inland Empire Industry

About the Program

Category: Arts, Culture and Historic Preservation (Best in Category)

Year: 2020

Pulp Culture: A Juicy Tale in the Orange Empire is an engaging, highly interactive exhibition developed with the goal of demonstrating how, in the 20th century, San Bernardino County and surrounding areas emerged as a focal point of citrus producers, resulting in significant migration for thousands of workers attracted to the industry. These workers, from various racial and ethnic backgrounds, picked, packed, shipped, and sold citrus across the globe. Their labor left a tremendous lasting impact on the environment and culture of the region, and forever changed the political, social, and economic landscape. The exhibit team deployed a new, innovative approach to telling this San Bernardino County story. By fully immersing visitors in this bilingual exhibit through the application of audio recordings of local residents, videos of the many facets of the citrus industry, interactive components (picking, sorting, packing, and shipping “fruit”), and allowing visitors themselves to share their own personal story with the “Community Stories” video kiosk, the exhibit highlights the connections to the immigrant communities, migrant workers, and entrepreneurs who laid the foundation of the region, once known as the “Orange Empire,” and promotes this shared heritage as a source of community pride.