It’s a season of changes for the Orange County Regional History Center. Its popular exhibit Figurehead: Music and Mayhem in Orlando’s Underground closes Sunday with a star-studded sendoff after a two-year run. And there’s a new cultural curator in town – Azela Santana has just taken over as the history center’s Executive Director after more than a decade in Orlando’s museum arts sector.
I spoke with Santana about her plans for the future of the museum…but first, I got a tour of the Music & Mayhem exhibit from the history center’s Assistant Curator of Collections Jeremy Hileman.
He says this collection was donated by Jim Faherty, a club owner and concert promoter who put Orlando on the indie-rock map between the mid-80s and mid-2000s, making the City Beautiful a destination for local and national groundbreaking bands.
“He donated these items, almost 600 concert posters, a lot of contracts, a lot of records and things from his label. But as a history museum, we had all this cool stuff that we could put on the wall, but we have to have some kind of narrative. We can't just say, Okay, well, this is a poster exhibit,” Hileman explained. “So through that, we were able to interview over 20 people involved in Figurehead be it musicians, club owners, other promoters, also the designers who did the majority of these posters.”
The who's who of music
The wall inside the exhibit entrance is indeed papered with concert flyers, largely for local shows from popular bands of the late 1980s and early 2000s. National acts include Smashing Pumpkins, Primus, Fugazi, the Meat Puppets, and Del Amitri, the latter playing at a Peaches, a long-defunct music store chain. Nearby is a poster for Nine Inch Nails as an opening band for legendary musician Peter Murphy at the Beacham Theater, a location just steps from the History Center itself.
“Another thing that's really cool about this is that so many of the things, like the sort of clubs or venues that are talked about in this exhibit, are within walking distance of our museum, here in downtown,” said Hileman. “So it kind of adds a little context to that.”
“Almost everything in here was designed by somebody who was local as well,” he added. “So it's not only representing local musicians and national musicians who came and did Orlando shows here in our clubs, but the artwork and the design was also done by people who are part of the community as well. I think it's really important to kind of highlight these specific stories, and that sort of builds out the tapestry of our local community.”
Under new management
After the Music and Mayhem tour, I went upstairs to meet the new boss, Azela Santana. She’s new to the role, but not the community. She moved to Central Florida in 2006, she noted, and “started off at the Orlando Museum of Art, and I worked in curatorial. I was there for about 10 years.”
Santana said much of her early time in the role will be dedicated to observing and learning before charging in with changes, but she did bring some new ideas with her. “I really love to collaborate. I love to partner,” she said. “I think it's extremely important, especially in our community, to work with others and really think about how we can strategically partner together to create more meaningful opportunities for our community.”
“The History Center has done so much wonderful programming,” she continued. “We have a lot of free days and a lot of community events. We have worked with the Orlando Public Library and other organizations. And so how can we still build upon that foundation and create more meaningful opportunities for people to engage?”
Another goal is to increase accessibility, she says. “And how can we kind of bring the History Center to a different level and create more access for our exhibitions to communities that maybe have not been through our doors yet, and being able to come and reach out to them as well.”
