An exhibit at the Georgia Southern University Museum sounds out the horrific events of 100 years ago, revealing a war that not only left more human beings dead than any before it but brought changes in civilization that echo today.

“The Great War that Changed the World, 1914–1918” also exhibits the enthusiasm of a young historian turned curator, the talents of graphic design students and artifacts lent by local people.

The First World War often has been overshadowed by the Second and by the American Civil War in local historical interest, said Sheila Boone, the project’s coordinator and graduate-student curator. Boone, 24, who next month will receive her master’s degree with a certificate in public history, sees the Great War, as it was first known, as one of history’s transformative seasons.

“Just the whole world gets shaken up and thrown into chaos, and we come out with a new standard, and it’s kind of, this is the post-war world, this is life now,” Boone said.

Besides a gas mask and uniforms, maps and medals and an entrenching shovel, the exhibit includes photos of victims of the “Spanish” influenza being carried on stretchers. The flu epidemic that began in the last year of the war eventually killed 20 million people or more, surpassing the death count from combat.

Meanwhile, Russia had withdrawn from the war in 1917, its revolution underway that produced Soviet Communism.

The Treaty of Versailles, which formally concluded the war, has its own wall segment. The penalties imposed on Germany contributed to resentments that helped the Nazis in their rise to power.

Social change

Other segments spotlight technological advances and the war’s economic and social consequences.

After women replaced men in many factory and farm jobs during the war, they won the right to vote in the United Kingdom in 1918 and in the United States in 1920. The fact that pants and short skirts were more practical work clothes contributed to the new women’s styles associated with “flappers” in the 1920s, Boone said.

Through four years as an undergraduate and two years of graduate work, all at Georgia Southern, she has studied the war from many angles. She wrote her first history paper, freshman year, on the war’s Galipoli Campaign, a two-sided slaughter that began 100 years ago next week.

While holding onto her interest in the Great War, Boone changed her mind about what she wants to do with her education. Her first plan was to become a history teacher.

“I realized that I like teaching people, but I don’t really want to be in the classroom setting,” she said. “So museums are another avenue.”

Like classroom teachers, Boone and the faculty curators have shown concern for making the exhibit suitable for children old enough to learn about the war. Georgia’s school performance standards require that students learn about the war beginning in fifth grade.

“My personal favorite book now is a children’s book on the history of World War I,” Boone said.

“The Story of the First World War,” by Paul Dowswell, helped her address the war to a fifth-grade reading level. But Boone also looked to Georgia’s high school world history standards for guidance about factual content.

“We’re not going to get into the really bloody and gory things,” she added.

For example, she notes that the war brought medical advances — such as plastic surgery. But the exhibit doesn’t include detailed descriptions of surgeries or photos of soldiers disfigured by caustic gas.

Graphic design

The first thing that greets visitors is a tableau of soldiers silhouetted in a black cutout against the contrasting title panel.

Three teams of students from Assistant Professor Santanu Majumdar’s professional practices class in graphic design, offered through the GSU Art Department, developed competing plans for the exhibit’s overall design. They pitched these to the curators committee, much as a professional team would present a proposal to a client.

The curators chose one design as the winner but had aspects of the other two incorporated in the final version.

On the list of acknowledgements, Mallory Biggers and Taylor Genereux appear first among the five members of the winning team. Biggers, 24, works as a graphic artist at the Statesboro Herald.

“We were competing against each other to get the client,” Biggers said. “That was basically what our class was, to learn how to work with clients.”

The client — the curators and museum director — asked that the designers keep the presentation respectful of the grim subject matter but also make it interesting and informative.

“They wanted everybody to go in there with an idea of learning something new that they didn’t already know, and our job was to create that setting and that mood and atmosphere,” said Genereux, 22.

Like Biggers, he is on track to graduate in May with a bachelor’s degree in graphic design.

The students worked with a museum model to chart the flow of visitors. They planned how printed materials would be displayed and chose the sizes and fonts. They also made the final artwork, using a large-format vinyl printer for the biggest photos.

For the front tableau, team members traced the silhouettes from a projected photographic enlargement, Genereux said. Biggers and her father, Walker McLendon, working in his barn, then cut the silhouettes out of two fiberboard panels.

All of the period artifacts were lent by GSU faculty members and a few people who came forward from the wider community. For example, Drew Brown, a Bulloch County resident who is both a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves and a civilian employee at Fort Stewart, has lent a 1916 copy of “The Private’s Manual,” by James A. Moss. As Brown explained, this was a commercial compilation from field manuals and training circulars. His great uncle, a World War I soldier, purchased this copy.

A number of the medals are on lend from Dr. Robert Benson, said GSU Museum Director Dr. Brent Tharp. Benson, a Statesboro physician, is a descendant of Dr. Edward Lane Moore, who treated the wounded and sick in France during the war.

Moore’s story will feature more prominently in a second exhibit, “The Great War that Changed America, 1914–18,” to open in 2017, the 100th anniversary of the United States’ entry into the war. It will include more Georgia and Statesboro connections.

The current exhibit is scheduled to remain open until Jan. 24, 2016.

But GSU history students will begin research this fall for the 2017 exhibit.

“This is kind of the model that we would like to see here, where we’re not changing exhibits as often in this gallery but we’re investing more time and effort in them so that not only are our students and visitors enjoying them, but we’re having our students be part of the curating, fabrication and decision process,” Tharp said.

Al Hackle may be reached at (912) 489-9458.