SCRANTON -- The Everhart Museum in Scranton was picked as having one of the best art exhibits across the country.
The Haitian flag exhibit landed the Everhart among some pretty big names in the art world.
Scranton made a few top 10 lists in 2014 and most of them were not complimentary: most hungover city, city with the ugliest accent.
So, imagine museum director Cara Southerland's surprise when the Everhart Museum in Scranton wound up with a very good ranking.
"I think I choked on my coffee reading it and what`s really nice, even though we are number 11 on the list, the writer put down that they were in no particular order," Southerland said.
One of the museum's exhibits was picked by The Huffington Post, an online newspaper, as one of the country's best art exhibits.
The exhibit is called "Sacred Symbols in Sequins." Something about the sparkly Voodoo flags from Haiti resonated with the national newspaper.
The Huffington Post list includes some heavy hitters in the art world, like the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art and the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles.
And then number 11 comes out of Scranton, Pennsylvania: the Everhart Museum. The only regional museum on the list.
"I think a lot of people tend to think that we are the small town museum, things don`t change much here and they need to go places like New York and Philly to get their big time cultural experiences," said museum curator Nezka Pfeifer.
Pfeifer said the flags are a travelling exhibit that the Everhart combined with photos of Haitian Voodoo rituals. The people at the Everhart took a chance on this exhibit and she's glad they did.
"Voodoo is something that has a very negative connotation and we were hoping to do, what we often try to do, is overturn those preconceptions for people when they come. And we really hope we open people`s minds and teach them some things," Pfeifer added.
Officials at the Everhart Museum hope the national recognition opens some eyes, too.
The travelling Voodoo exhibit will move on next month to make way for something new, and hopefully just as notable.
