Past Exhibitions

About Past Exhibitions

Past exhibitions at LancasterHistory are exhibitions that have come and gone and are no longer display at LancasterHistory. This page is an archive to record past exhibitions.

Past Main Exhibitions

 

Past Special Exhibitions

The Long Road to LGBTQ+ Equality in Pennsylvania

The Long Road to LGBTQ+ Equality in PennsylvaniaThe Long Road to LGBTQ+ Equality in Pennsylvania is a traveling history exhibit from the LGBT Center of Central Pennsylvania and the LGBT Center Central PA History Project that chronicles the efforts that activists have undertaken in Pennsylvania to achieve full equality for LGBTQ+ people.

Pennsylvania does not yet have statewide legislation that protects LGBTQ people from discrimination in housing, employment, education, and public accommodations. For more than five decades, activists have been working to obtain these protections one battle at a time, one municipality at a time, and the work continues. The Long Road to LGBTQ+ Equality in Pennsylvania chronicles these and other efforts to achieve full equality for LGBTQ+ people. Enhanced with photographs and artifacts from the LancasterHistory collections, this special, traveling exhibition highlights not just the political struggles for civil rights, but the personal stories as well.

The exhibit debuted in mid-February 2019, in the 50th anniversary year of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, a pivotal event in the LGBTQ+ movement toward equality.

The Long Road was on display at LancasterHistory from July 24 – September 9, 2023. Admission to the exhibit is included with the purchase of a General Admission ticket or Exhibitions-Only ticket. LancasterHistory Members receive complimentary admission.

A Sweet Start: Milton Hershey’s Lancaster Connections

A circa 1890 image of Milton Hershey's Lancaster Caramel Company on Church Street in Lancaster City.
A circa 1890 image of Milton Hershey’s Lancaster Caramel Company on Church Street in Lancaster City.

Milton Hershey spent much of his early life in Lancaster County. Hershey grew up on a farm in Bart Township and then, as a young man, learned how to make chocolate and established his first successful business in Lancaster City on Church Street. Buoyed by success, Hershey founded the Hershey Chocolate Company in Lancaster in 1894 and lived in the city with his wife from 1898 until 1904. Explore the photograph exhibit, A Sweet Start, highlighting Milton Hershey’s personal and professional connections to Lancaster.

This exhibit opened to the public on Tuesday, January 17, 2023 in Stoudt Gallery at LancasterHistory and closed Saturday, July 1, 2023.