VIEWPOINT | Wanted: Citibank artifacts

Guest column by Ben Jones

Historians research in archives to write books. Museum curators look through collections to design exhibits. Both do so to tell our history, but both are restricted to work from available evidence, and when there is no evidence, our history will have gaps. In our efforts to design the coming state history museum, we’ve realized a few key events are completely missing from our museum artifact collections.  

 Odds are, the longer ago something occurred, the more likely it is that people will have donated artifacts to us, and that history is documented in the museum. But the artifacts, photos, letters, and journals that are undonated and remain in your closets and basements create a museum lacking a key exhibit. The state history museum currently has nothing from when Citibank set up a major credit card bank in Sioux Falls. With no artifacts to include, our exhibit is silent about this important story.

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