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🎨✨You’re invited to experience our long-awaited Smithsonian exhibit at the Yuma Art Center, made possible through our partnership with Arizona Humanities.Spark! Places of Innovation explores the unique combination of places, people, and circumstances that sparks innovation and invention in rural communities. Inspired by an exhibition by the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, the exhibition features stories gathered from diverse communities across the nation. Photographs, engaging interactives, objects, videos, and digital stories bring a multilayered experience to reveal the leaders, challenges, successes, and future of innovation in each town. Technical, social, cultural, or artistic– every sort of innovation story is as unique as each community and will be represented in Spark! Places of Innovation.
The story of human history is written in inventions and innovations. People are problem solvers. Sometimes we invent. More often, we innovate, introducing a fresh idea or an invention into use in some way that creates a new way of doing or thinking. Rural Americans are creating new products, processes and experiences that change local life and sometimes reach far beyond. Yet, invention and innovation truly flourishes in some places and not others. Why?
✨Spark! Places of Innovation will be the springboard for diverse local programming in the humanities, sciences, and arts. Visitors will be inspired to learn about innovation has shaped their own communities and how they may be innovators themselves. This exhibition will be an opportunity for community members to come together in conversation around their community’s history, present, and future with innovation.
Six stand-alone sections of panels over a wielded aluminum structure with exhibition elements that include: audio, 4 video monitors including a touchscreen of youth-produced stories, 1 flipbook, 3 object cases, multiple mechanical interactives, visitor comment cards about innovation in their town, a "Citizen Innovation" game designed to inspire visitor conversation, and digital stories launched with image recognition to display additional videos, images, and text via personal mobile or provided handheld devices. Spanish translation of all content will be provided digitally and in print.
Free admission | Open to the public
🍽 Enjoy hors d'oeuvres and a cash/credit bar during the reception.
Opening Reception Info:
đź“… Friday, February 20, 2026
đź•• 6- 8 PM
đź“Ť Yuma Art Center, 254 S Main Street
Exhibition Dates: February 20 - March 28, 2026
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
254 S Main St, Yuma, AZ, United States, Arizona 85364
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