Pleasanton's Museum on Main has partnered up with the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service to bring Tri-Valley residents a little history of how labor and jobs have changed in the area over the last 150 years.

Ken MacLennan, curator at the Museum on Main, told the Weekly that the museum's newest exhibit -- "On the Job: The Changing World of Work in the Valley and Beyond" -- provides the community with a unique, humanities-based examination of the local work history of Pleasanton and the greater Tri-Valley.

"That big shift of Pleasanton developing from an agricultural hub, a sort of a small market depot for the valley's farmers, into basically a Silicon Valley suburb ... that's sort of the big arc," MacLennan said. "But in that there's lots of little different kinds of changes, a lot of different kinds of jobs and a lot of different aspects of work that the exhibit looks at."

The exhibit was a joint effort between Pleasanton's museum and the Smithsonian through a project aptly named the Museum on Main Street program -- which is a different entity than Pleasanton's local museum.

The Smithsonian program, which came out of a partnership with the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and state humanities councils, was created to serve museums, libraries and historical societies in rural areas, where about one-fifth of all Americans live, according to MacLennan.

The effort brings exhibitions, educational resources and programming to small towns across America.

According to MacLennan, the Pleasanton museum was selected to participate in the Smithsonian program in the spring of 2021, after they applied for the opportunity, in order to get more experience and knowledge in exhibit development.

He said that because the museum has worked with the Smithsonian in the past to bring exhibits such as the "Journey Stories" exhibit in 2015 that examined how transportation and migration helped build America.

But what made "On the Job" different from past exhibits from the Smithsonian was that it was more of a collaborative effort between the two organizations in terms of sharing material and having more of a back-and-forth on actually curating the exhibit.

MacLennan explained how the Smithsonian program developed an exhibit kit that acted as sort of a framework where all he had to do was insert relevant local materials, such as photos and other pieces of historical collections, into the framework format.

"Museum on Main staff and volunteers fleshed that framework out with local artifacts, historic images and oral history material to develop an exhibit reflecting the particular experiences of Pleasanton and the Amador-Livermore Valley in the evolution of work in the United States," MacLennan said in a press release.

MacLennan said that he especially appreciated the collaboration because it was more than just the Pleasanton museum staff filling out the kit that Washington, D.C. sent.

"It wasn't just they sent us the kit, we build the kit," he said. "They send us the kit, we develop a plan to implement the kit, they review that and suggest work ... and then we finally come to an agreement (and say) OK, yeah, this is gonna work."

MacLennan said that the museum was able to "build on this framework to show the local story, show Pleasanton and the valley ... and how the valley has changed and how those changes have changed the way that people work."

"And not just like the physical end of it," MacLennan added. "But also things like the structure of a job, employment relations and contracts."

One example of that, he said, is that the exhibit will have an old employee handbook from former city employee Christopher Rizzoli who recently retired from the operations department. The handbook was issued to Rizzoli when he first got the job and is full of all the things he needed to know as a new Pleasanton government employee.

MacLennan said that other things the exhibit will have on display include old firefighter uniforms, flight suits, old household and agricultural work tools, and outdated machinery such as washing machines, typewriters and overhead projectors.

The exhibit's displays will also include video clips from oral history interviews and images from Pleasanton's agricultural past as well as its high-tech present that MacLennan said the museum has obtained from the Smithsonian's national archive as well as photos obtained from the Bay Area News Group.

"A little story here, a little story there about what it was like to work in a dentist's office or pick crops or do a roundup or work at one of the restaurants," he said.

And while the exhibit might seem like it only focuses on one thing -- jobs -- MacLennan said that the topic really does cover a lot of ground in terms of the region's history.

"It's not just paid labor and it's not just wage stuff. It's housework, it's family businesses. It's big corporations, farmers, ranchers and the government," MacLennan said. "They talk about how you dress for work, they talk about safety, they talk about where you work, like the actual physical environment, the tools people use and they talk about things like labor organizing and bureaucracy."

He added that with such a wide variety of jobs and types of work that the exhibit will feature, he's hoping that more people will be able to see something that they have experienced in the past and will be able to gain a deeper appreciation for how the area has changed.

"We're certainly hoping that it may not be your job specifically that gets up there. But you see something you're like, 'Oh, yeah, I did something kind of like that,'" MacLennan said. "We're giving people the opportunity to see something of their own experience and other people's experience. Which again, is something we try to do with every show."

The Pleasanton Museum on Main will be holding a free, opening reception for the exhibit on Wednesday (May 31) from 5-7 p.m. where MacLennan said everyone is welcome to check out the display and enjoy light refreshments and snacks.

The exhibit will run through July 8 at the museum in downtown Pleasanton, 603 Main St.