Volunteers from the Mendota Museum & Historical Society have been busy contacting past Sweet Corn Festival queens asking to borrow their pageant dresses for an upcoming exhibit.
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Mendota’s 2016 Sweet Corn Festival Queen, Whitney Lewis, lends last year’s pageant dress to the Mendota Museum & Historical Society where museum volunteer, Chris Stamberger, prepares it for display. Several former queens’ dresses will be on display Saturday and Sunday during this year’s Sweet Corn Festival. (Reporter photo by Jennifer Sommer)
MENDOTA – Volunteers from the Mendota Museum & Historical Society have been busy contacting past Sweet Corn Festival queens asking to borrow their pageant dresses for an upcoming exhibit.
Museum volunteer, Janice Shirey said they began researching the festival’s history last year. “We get asked a lot of questions about the festival and the pageant, so we thought we better start collecting some information,” she said.
Their research led to an idea to display former queens’ dresses.
The Sweet Corn Festival Queen pageant began in 1948. Interesting facts include multiple queens have been crowned in the same family and the first crowns were made of corn.
The exhibit will showcase over a dozen dresses from former queens, with the oldest one dating back to 1975. “Each one is unique. It is fun to see how styles have changed,” stated Shirey.
Besides dresses, the exhibit will include photos from past pageants.
With the pageant and festival right outside the museum, Shirey hopes the display will be of interest to festival-goers.
The exhibit will be open to the public at the Hume-Carnegie Museum at Veterans Park in Mendota on Saturday and Sunday from 1-4 p.m. during Sweet Corn Festival weekend. For more information, contact the museum at (815) 539-3373.
