10/15/2026
Our new exhibit highlighting longtime Minyard employee, Joe Tarver, and the involvement and impact Minyard Food Stores had on the North Texas community is finally on display in the Minyard’s Store. This post shares the process behind curating and designing this exhibit.
We started by visiting Joe Tarver who wanted to donate his Minyard Food Stores items to the museum. Joe was involved in the curation of the Minyard’s Store when it was first moved to the company’s headquarters in the 1980s. He also compiled a list of notable events and charitable actions hosted by Minyard Food Stores.
With our new artifacts and information, we began brainstorming the focus of our exhibit. When we narrowed down our focus, we began selecting artifacts we thought best told these stories. Then, we created a rough sketch on paper for a potential layout. As we compiled our research and photographs, we used a scaled down document in Canva to create our final layout.
Once we were happy with the layout and information displayed, we moved everything to 2x6 and 24x36 documents. We had to scale everything up, and then we printed them. We print our exhibit materials from either CVS or Walgreens.
After we picked up the printed documents, it was time to cut everything out. We added borders to all labels to ensure we were leaving adequate white space. Once everything was cut, we glued everything onto pieces of foam board using spray adhesive.
The adhesive we use dries very quickly, so we didn’t have to wait long before we could cut everything out. We place the foamboard on top of a scrap piece of plywood and use razors to cut each piece out. We also framed our artifacts using shadowboxes from IKEA and one custom made shadowbox for the tie and ID badge. To hold the objects in place we used mounting putty and tape.
Finally, we began exhibit install. We worked from left to right and top to bottom referencing our layout in Canva. We used nails to secure everything to the wall.
After months of planning, researching, and curating, here is our final product. We are so thrilled with how this exhibit turned out and can’t wait for our community
