Heidi Gengenbach – Page 4 – Public History at UMass Boston

June 23, 2020Heidi Gengenbach No Comments

Going Virtual: Museum Education During COVID-19

By Kaylee Redard, Public History

Garden view of the exterior of The House of the Seven Gables. The house was built in 1668 by John Turner, a wealthy Salem merchant. Courtesy of The House of the Seven Gables website.

The House of the Seven Gables, a non-profit historic site in Salem, Massachusetts, is dedicated to preserving the past and continuing the American story. It is both an international tourist attraction as well as a community resource, particularly for the immigrant population in Salem. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19 the historic houses on site are closed to the public and, like many other museums, they are limited to running a few programs virtually in summer 2020. This has made my internship an interesting and challenging experience.

The global pandemic greatly influenced and shaped my internship, both in content and practice. I was tasked with evaluating remote museum education programs during COVID-19, and to use this data to propose redesign of a Gables face-to-face school program–Naumkeag Settlers to Salem Shippers—as a virtual program.

Some of the items used in the on-site Naumkeag Settlers to Salem Shippers program, including a cone of sugar. Courtesy of The House of the Seven Gables website.

Naumkeag Settlers to Salem Shippers is a school program for grades two through five that is designed to engage students in learning about colonial life during a visit to The House of the Seven Gables. Traditionally, this program begins by introducing three 17th century children: Jehoden Palfrey, the daughter of one of the original colonists of Salem, John Turner II, who was the son of a wealthy Salem merchant, and an Irish indentured servant named Joan Sullivan. The students are then divided into groups to do activities, directed by historical interpreters, around the historic site. These activities include a brief tour of The House of the Seven Gables, a wool carding activity, learning about colonial food, and lastly, playing with colonial toys. Once the students have gone through all the activities they regroup for a concluding discussion. The entire program is very hands-on and makes use of the entire site to accommodate large groups of children. My job was to propose a way to make this hands-on, face-to-face program into an engaging virtual experience.

To do this I needed to become more informed about the current state of the museum education field and learn about remote school programming. First, I reached out to the museum education community to see how other sites were adjusting their programs in response to COVID-19. I contacted eleven different museums and historic institutions, including Historic Beverly, Salem Maritime National Historic Site, and the USS Constitution Museum, and asked if they would be willing to share how they are doing programming during COVID-19. I received enthusiastic responses and quickly arranged meetings over Zoom or phone with everyone who was available.

In these meetings, I posed four questions:

What programs did you run before COVID-19?
Have you changed any of these programs to make them accessible during the pandemic?
What feedback have you received about these programs?
Did your institution work with teachers when making changes to their education programs?

Everyone was planning different ways to engage with their visitors of all ages. Most programs were geared toward students and families, but a few have been for the general public. Since my focus was on school programs, I tried to keep the conversation on those, but I was excited to hear everyone’s plans.

Every professional colleague had imaginative ideas on how to reach out to their community. These conversations helped me envision the program I wanted to build. Discussions on how to present content in an engaging way while on the other side of a screen, or which platform has worked best for connecting with students, were helpful in determining which way my project went.

Undertaking my internship during COVID-19 was challenging, but it offered me unexpected and rewarding opportunities. I had not expected making such broad connections with professionals in the field during an internship—I came to look forward to each of these meetings not only because it was a chance to talk to someone in the midst of quarantine, but because of the opportunities for professional development and building a network of colleagues.

I also learned the importance of flexibility. To communicate with colleagues and my site supervisor, I had to make sure that my schedule was as flexible as possible to accommodate the different forms of communication and time boundaries of multiple hectic schedules. With the weekly, if not daily, change in regulations surrounding COVID-19, many museums, including The House of the Seven Gables, have had to change guidelines without much notice. This can drastically alter staff schedules and limit contact time. I have learned two other crucial lessons from this internship: the importance of patience, with people and technology, and time management, because you never know what will come next during this pandemic. I am looking forward to hopefully implementing my proposal for a virtual Naumkeag Settlers to Salem Shippers program and the potential for other remote programs that result from this experience.

February 11, 2020Heidi Gengenbach No Comments

Historic House Tours: Reshaping the Narrative

By: Rosanna Wright, Public History

Rose Nichols (on the far left) and Marian Nichols (on the far right) pictured with the Baroness Marianne Von Ergelet, during their visit to Salzburg, Austria. Credit: Courtesy of Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Additional Papers of the Nichols-Shurtleff Family, 1758-2006, 1880-1960

While women have participated in the preservation of historic homes since Anne Pamela Cunningham purchased and restored George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate in 1858, rarely have women had the opportunity to preserve women’s narratives. Most historic house tours in the United States narrate the histories of men, especially the “great men” who are usually white leaders of political, economic, or military stature. In the past decade, there has been a movement – not necessarily to replace these narratives – but to explore and embrace other avenues. Historic homes, such as the Molly Brown House Museum in Denver, Colorado, and the Bradford House in Duxbury, Massachusetts, are two out of a few examples of historic homes that have reconstructed their tours to focus on the women of the house. In the past few months, I have been working as an intern at the Nichols House Museum to plan and implement a tour that focuses solely on the three sisters who once resided there.

Currently, the historic house interprets the life of Rose Standish Nichols, a pacifist, suffragist, and landscape gardener, and her family, who lived on Beacon Hill from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. The museum offers visitors a unique glimpse into upper-class domestic life during this time. It aims to inspire the public through innovative programs that embrace the social concerns of the Nichols family that are still relevant today.

Text Box 1 — Exterior of the Nichols House. Charles Bulfinch designed the townhouse in the Federalist style; it was built in 1804. Courtesy Nichols House Museum.

Fortunately, my internship term coincided with the museum’s initiative to improve and update its interpretive plan. The museum currently provides one tour that focuses on the typical day-to-day running of the house – providing details on Rose’s and her family’s interests. The three girls spent the majority of their young lives in the home, and Rose, as the oldest daughter, took over the running of the house when her mother died in 1935. Rose specifically left the house with intentions for it as a museum, and as a result, her life and achievements take precedent on the tour.

My research on the three sisters’ activities, however, has revealed exciting details about their political activism and achievements. The first half of the new tour will explore how the three sisters used their home to make social and political advancements. The young women used this domestic space very differently than their mother. Their mother, Elizabeth Homer Nichols, as a Victorian upper-class woman, attempted to create her home as a perfect private sphere for raising her children, looking after her husband, and on occasion, hosting charity events and social evenings. In contrast, the sisters hosted tea parties, lectures, and balls, to not only create a space where women and men could exchange political views but in their capacities as members of the Boston Equal Suffrage Society, Cornish Equal Suffrage League, and The Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom. The second half of the tour will focus on the years after suffrage and how the vote allowed the Nichols sisters to move more fully out of the vicinities of their own homes to contribute to society and local politics in new ways; these themes were previously unacceptable.

pasted-image.tiff — The Nichols House library. Once used as an office by Arthur Nichols, it was turned into a personal library by Rose Nichols after her father’s death in 1923. Courtesy Nichols House Museum

This thematic focus will help me identify valuable primary sources to build the narrative and share it with visitors. For example, I have found considerable archival details about the youngest sister, Margaret Shurtleff-Nichols, who currently receives the least attention during the general house tour. Margaret was involved in publicly protesting the hearings of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, anarchist immigrants from Italy on trial for murder. The trial occurred during the Red Scare of 1919-1920, a period of widespread fear of radicalism and anarchism. Margaret attended every public hearing, along with Woodrow Wilson’s daughter Jessie Wilson Sayre, and she visited Sacco in jail several times. It has been exciting to give Margaret a voice on the tour by uncovering such archival information.

Perhaps the most challenging aspect of creating this tour has been linking such research to the house and its furnishings. To ensure an audience is fully engaged, it is essential to connect the dialogue given by the tour guide to the visual elements of the house that reinforce or narrate this history. Although I am trying to shift the role of the house to the setting for the exciting lives of the sisters, it is still vital to link such information to the house and other interpretive objects. Visiting other sites similar to the Nichols House has vastly expanded my understanding of the different ways to relate particular objects and architectural features of the house to specific dialogue that might not be directly relatable to particular objects. One method requires a three step process. This begins by introducing an object, relating it in one way or another to the subject, and then linking it to a broader theme. For example, the chairs in the library of the Nichols House were designed and carved by Rose. She, along with her sisters, learned such skills from attending Mrs. Shaw’s school, one of the first American schools to teach girls subjects traditionally only offered to boys, like woodworking. Such relates to the fact that from a young age, the girls were exposed to progressive ideas, especially as the school’s founder, Pauline Agassiz Shaw, was the president of the Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government.

My experience at the museum has also introduced me to the challenges that face historic house staff in their work. Although the three full-time staff members at the museum are incredibly skilled and experienced in the public history world, their work exceeds their job descriptions and requirements. This has been extraordinarily valuable to my understanding of the day to day work environment attributed to small museums and has given me a new respect for both the full-time staff and the volunteers who give up so much of their time and effort to narrate history both objectively and accurately.

February 11, 2020Heidi Gengenbach No Comments

Uncovering Untold Stories in Lexington

By: Andrew Lucibella, Public History

You may think you already know all there is to know about Lexington, Massachusetts. Most people do. Throughout my internship with the Lexington Historical Society, I have been working to uncover stories that will change that perspective. Lexington’s claim to fame is well known. With the destination of Paul Revere’s ride (and William Dawes’s not-so-famous ride) and the site of the Revolution’s first bloodshed, histories of Lexington usually begin in 1775, and tell the triumphant story of a patriot town wholeheartedly dedicated to the revolutionary values with which we are all so familiar. Lurking beneath the surface, though, are important stories that complicate this narrative.

The plaque outside of LHS’s Buckman Tavern honoring Prince Estabrook. The plaque was dedicated in 2008 and features the image of reenactor Charles Price.
Courtesy of Lexington Historical Society.

What most people do not know about Lexington is that when shots rang out on April 19, 1775, and the town’s legacy was solidified, six enslaved people, and at least one indentured servant of color resided in the town. This number represents a sharp decrease from the two dozen enslaved people who were enumerated in the Massachusetts slaves census of 1754, but these six individuals were nonetheless listed as property among horses, sheep, cows, oxen, and swine on tax valuations from 1775. At least one slave, Prince Estabrook, was wounded in the fighting early that morning, while Eli Burdoo, a black indentured servant and Silas Burdoo, a free man of color and Eli’s cousin also participated in the events on Battle Road. One of the main goals of my internship has been to piece together the stories of these men’s lives and those of other residents of color, in order to present them to the public to both challenge the common narrative surrounding the town, and to paint a more complete picture about revolutionary Lexington. Slavery has a long history in the town of Lexington, but that history has gone largely untold to the public in the society’s interpretation of their historic homes, despite the presence of enslaved people living and working in at least one of these homes. My project seeks to help correct this hole in interpretation.

I am very fortunate to be working with an organization that is extremely dedicated to seeing this project through. As more and more small historical sites and societies—especially in the North—begin to confront their associations with slavery, it will inevitably foster tough conversations and force museum staff to be prepared for difficult questions. Lexington is definitely ready for these challenges. Each new staff member I encounter, from retired volunteer greeters all the way up to the Executive Director tell me how excited they are about the research I am doing and how they can’t wait until my research finds its way into the society’s interpretation of the houses. These have been encouraging conversations, as Lexington has been laying the groundwork for a project like this for a while through public talks and research consultations, but now museum staff and residents alike truly ready to confront the realities of their difficult past.

These findings though, have not come easily. A major challenge of this internship has been locating and mining primary sources. I have scoured tax records, vital records, and muster rolls, which have been very helpful in determining numbers of enslaved individuals, their baptism and death dates, and military service, but this information largely amounts to statistics, and many of these records are incomplete. Further, no period sources go into any narrative detail about people of color in the town, and certainly no sources from the period come from people of color themselves. This makes it exceedingly difficult to do justice to their stories, as it often involves relying on white-written secondary sources and filling in major gaps in timeline with educated conjecture. One exception is Silas Burdoo, who, in applying for a federal pension almost fifty years after the Battle of Lexington, outlined his military service in great detail. This discovery has been of major importance to my project as it is the only surviving first person account from a person of color.

The exterior of the Hancock-Clarke House, home of Reverend John Hancock (grandfather of declaration signer John Hancock). This home was the destination of Paul Revere’s ride in 1775, but had also been home to two enslaved people, Jack and Dinah, in the mid-eighteenth century. Courtesy Lexington Historical Society.

It has also been incredibly enlightening to observe the day-to-day challenges of working at a small historical society. I have worked closest with the Education and Interpretation Manager as well as the Collections Manager, and have found that their tasks go far beyond what their titles suggest. I have seen them dress in full beekeeping suits to remove a bees’ nest from an attic, work hands-on with HVAC workers to fix a critical heating issue in their archives space, and spend months harassing their phone company to fix phone issues in their main visitors’ center. All this while developing and leading school programs, overseeing a move of their historical archives, and managing their committees of staff members and volunteers. These observations have revealed the high level of adaptability and multitasking required of staff at historical societies, but have also shown me that there is never a dull moment. This is the type of work and work environment that I am excited to embrace in the future. I am excited to continue important historical work, but why not spice things up every once in a while by throwing on a beekeeping suit or fixing a furnace? There are unique challenges both historically and professionally in working at a small historical society, but these are challenges I feel prepared to confront as a result of my internship with Lexington Historical Society.

February 11, 2020Heidi Gengenbach 2 Comments

Ancient Archaeology meets Public History: Project Tlalocan, the Underworld Beneath the Feathered Serpent Temple

By: Kristine Malpica, Public History

As I enter the massive Ciudadela plaza in Teotihuacan Mexico, the sun is peering over the top of the Feathered Serpent Temple, one of the world’s most known edifices. Constructed around 250 C.E., this pyramidical monument of magnificently carved stone was once brilliantly decorated with plaster and brightly colored paint, honoring and celebrating Mesoamerica’s iconic symbol, the Feathered Serpent.

The Feathered Serpent Temple, Teotihuacan Mexico. (Courtesy of Kristine Malpica 2019)

Casting my gaze from the Feathered Serpent Temple platform across the vast Ciudadela plaza, I can visualize hundreds of thousands of people gathering to participate in grand public ceremonies, during Teotihuacan’s apogee between 250-450 C.E. The latest archaeological research findings made by the Tlalocan Project, suggest that this plaza was intentionally flooded during the rainy season, in order to ritually reenact the origins of cosmological time, the calendar and agricultural cycles. During these large public spectacles, the Feathered Serpent Temple metaphorically represented the mountain of creation, rising from the primordial sea, solidifying ideological and political power and social cohesion.

Today, I am the one of the first to arrive at this popular UNESCO World Heritage archaeological site, once North America’s first metropolis of over 100,000, now attracting millions of international visitors annually. This ancient complex transports me across time and space as I listen to the throngs of tour groups, vendors hawking their crafts, music from flutes, barking dogs and myriad sounds filling the air. I can easily imagine this urban capital, nearly two thousand years ago, with similar sights and sounds of a bustling cosmopolitan civic center, pilgrimage destination and vast marketplace.

Visitors to Teotihuacan’s Ciudadela Complex climb the stairs to view the Feathered Serpent Temple. (Courtesy of Kristine Malpica 2019)

Seventeen meters below my feet, archaeologist Sergio Gomez Chavez and the Tlalocan Project (an international team of multi-disciplinary specialists administered by Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History) made one of archaeology’s most astounding discoveries in the past century- a man-made tunnel and cave structure beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent. It has taken over 15 years for the team to remove over 1000 tons of earth, using the latest technologies and methodologies, in order to uncover hundreds of thousands of objects ritually buried by the ancient Teotihucanaos and not seen for nearly two millennia. This project made headline news and shed new light on this ancient site.

Recently, objects excavated from the tunnel beneath the Feathered Serpent Temple were exhibited in the U.S. for the first time, garnering much public interest. This has prompted the Tlalocan Project to embark on an ambitious new plan to make their collections available to museums. This would disseminate the project’s research worldwide and introduce ancient Teotihuacan society to global audiences, who can share in the excitement of archaeological discovery and view objects which have seldom or never before been publicly seen.

Examining the Tlalocan Project archaeological collections (Courtesy of Kristine Malpica 2019)

To promote the installation of exhibitions of the Teotihuacan collections in museums around the world, the Tlalocan Project is creating an exhibition prospectus to share with interested institutions. As an intern, I began the process of preparing this prospectus, which will include crucial information for borrowing institutions, including the significant cultural history of Teotihuacan; the history and background of the Tlalocan Project; and the important discoveries made in the tunnel beneath the Feathered Serpent Temple. It will also describe the scope of archaeological collections available for exhibition and present the team’s research on the objects.

My primary responsibility in creating this prospectus focused on researching the Tlalocan project history over the past 15 years, placing it in context with related archaeological excavations at the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, Ciudadela complex and Teotihuacan, more broadly. I conducted this research in a broad array of primary and secondary sources, including books; journal articles; press releases; media articles; interviews with Tlalocan project and museum staff; television documentaries; museum exhibition catalogues; lecture transcripts and presentations. I have also helped to identify and select multi-media resources, including photos, videos, 3D graphic imagery and other materials which will support the new exhibitions. I also worked closely with Tlalocan Project staff to identify the short and long term museum exhibition goals and objectives.

Finding, interpreting and synthesizing this great abundance of materials from disparate sources has sharpened my research, writing and organizational skills. The language barrier has challenged me to improve my Spanish and translation skills and also read between the lines to understand and analyze, to the best of my ability. This process has honed my communication skills and taught me new ways to navigate cultural and linguistic differences. This internship gave me opportunities to broaden my academic and professional relationships and experiences working with an international institution and team of multidisciplinary researchers. This will undoubtedly serve me well in an increasingly multicultural, globalized museum and public history field.

It has been a privilege and pleasure to deepen my knowledge of Teotihuacan and further my involvement with the Tlalocan project, as they begin an exciting new public history and exhibition chapter.

Looking ahead, I hope to assist with the next stages of planning and development for new international partnerships with institutions where interpretive museum exhibits can be hosted. I also hope to help forge long term collaborations, by working with Tlalocan project staff to evaluate and determine ways that U.S. students, researchers and institutions can partner on this important research and exhibits, which can serve as a model to promote transnational cooperation.

This internship experience has taught me much about Teotihuacan as an important cultural and historical site of pilgrimage past and present. In our current climate of political, social and ethnic tensions, we can learn many lessons from Teotihuacan, one of the most multicultural ancient societies with a large immigrant population. Like this ancient society, we face many challenges today in integrating different cultures, nationalities and languages and must work cooperatively, working across borders towards solutions that build bridges that unite, not walls that divide.

November 1, 2019Heidi Gengenbach 2 Comments

The Many Tasks of an Intern at a Small Historic Site

By: Dominique Romero, Public History Track

A few months ago, I was sifting through the websites of various institutions in the pursuit of finding an internship that would fit my career goals. I looked through opportunities’ at large institutions, museums that had a wealth of resources, and other internships that were not in my career focus. I eventually found the President James K. Polk State Historic Site, a small museum in Pineville, North Carolina, which hosts an exhibit development internship that called to me. Given my career goals, an internship focusing on the preparation of a temporary exhibit, including research and writing the exhibit text, sounded like a dream to me. I was excited to be offered the position and I knew it would be an extraordinary educational opportunity for my career. This internship, however, has prepared me and challenged me in ways I did not expect.

My responsibilities went beyond exhibit text and research, to include visitor services and social media. While it was not what I initially expected, my various responsibilities allowed me to be involved with different areas of daily operations and to learn about how small historic sites function. The 10 hours a week that I worked on-site, across two days, focused on learning about visitor services. Having worked at a historic site in Downtown Boston in visitor services, I fully believed I was prepared enough to master visitor services at the James K Polk site quickly. This was not the case because the two sites cater to different audiences and experiences.

The experience at the James K Polk site requires more interaction between the staff and the visitor because of the guided tour component. At Polk, my role demanded immediate and consistent connection with visitors, from the moment they walked through the door when I greeted them and explained the available activities. After visitors viewed a short film on President Polk, I led them on a guided tour through the site, which I conducted every two hours. Exceptional and individualized visitor experience is a priority for this state-managed site, which includes offering multiple opportunities for learning. Learning how to lead a tour and interact with people during a tour was one of the major challenges of my internship. I arrived at Polk without prior experience or training in guiding. Over the course of the summer, I discovered that the job requires a lot of improvisation and thinking on your toes to read the impressions of the group. During this internship, I’ve gained a new skill set with creating an engaging experience for visitors and I’m excited to continue using it throughout my career.

My internship with Polk also gave me opportunities to build skills in interacting with online audiences through social media posts. The staff has been committed to expanding its social media audience for a few years now. They prepared a social media plan as a foundation for setting their goals for each social media platform and the desired online presence they seek. Site staff use a datasheet to analyze the success of posts and the number and nature of interactions on certain platforms. Their goal is to strategically use each platform to effectively reach an audience. I found it challenging to write in a voice that fits with the site and to choose an interesting topic that would entice social media users to engage with a post. The process of trial and error has given me insight into what users want to read and how to present, and crafting these posts has been a new source of learning for me.

While I dedicated 10 hours each week to crafting my visitor services skills on-site, I spent the other 10 hours of my week immersing myself in the exhibit planning process. Throughout this project, I gained knowledge in the exhibit planning process that I was looking for in an internship. At this stage of the planning process, I began by evaluating preliminary research already undertaken by the previous intern. Reviewing the information at hand, I identified areas for further research that helped form my initial exhibition outline. This outline included a general summary, main themes, influential figures to highlight, and strategies for organizing and presenting information on each panel. My work on the exhibit outline guided the draft of the exhibit text that completed my internship process.

Figure 2: Headquarters for the North Carolina Equal Suffrage Association in Raleigh, NC. Date. C.1910’s- ‘20’s. In 1894, the North Carolina Equal Suffrage Association was formed in Asheville, North Carolina to champion women’s equality and campaign for the right to vote. The NCESA did not gain political momentum until 1913, but its formation marks the beginning of the organized suffrage movement in North Carolina as the first suffrage club in the state.
Credit: Courtesy of the State Archives of North Carolina.

My work on this exhibition demonstrated to me the essentially collaborative nature of the exhibit planning process, at multiple levels. Early in the project, I collaborated with my supervisors to choose exhibit themes and storyline, and draft panel layouts. I reached out to higher-ups at the state level for help creating an artifact list and researching artifacts to be displayed in the exhibit. As I entered the home stretch, I worked with my supervisors on editing drafts of the exhibit text and labels, in preparation to send it on to the exhibit planning committee of state officials for approval. This aspect of the internship reinforced my own career goals and proved the many rewards of working collaboratively to create an exhibit.

My internship at the President James K Polk State Historic Site gave me insight and opportunities to learn a variety of skills necessary to practicing at a small historic site— in visitor services, guiding tours, exhibit planning, and daily operations. Performing so many tasks at a small historic site may be challenging, but it is an enriching experience that will teach you something new every day.