In 2025, graduate students in “Interpreting History in Public: Approaches to Public History Practice” (HIST 625) worked with Historic New England’s Inclusive Descriptions project, which is devoted to reassessing and recontextualizing objects in their collections that have racist or otherwise harmful histories. This work is a key part of Historic New England’s commitment to telling diverse and truly reflective stories about life in New England, past and present. Their Recovering New England’s Voices Initiative, seeks to reimagine and recenter storytelling at the sites, emphasizing the voices and presence of historically marginalized individuals and communities. These stories emphasize the lives and labor of enslaved and free people of color, the history and continued presence of Indigenous people, and themes of disability, sexuality, and resistance, among others. Historic New England continues to implement reparative language descriptions for existing collections and creates respectful and inclusive language descriptions for new collections.
Public History students reinterpreted and rewrote objects and their descriptions for HNE’s digital catalog, focusing on the collections at their Cogswell’s Grant property in Essex, MA, the home of 20th century collectors Bert and Nina Fletcher Little.
Our historical research and interpretation span the years from pre-contact through the mid 20th century. We explored the possibilities of material culture as historical resources and how to interrogate them. What can an object tell us about the past? What meanings have different people ascribed to these objects? Why did collectors acquire these objects and what messages did they use them to convey? How do we decide what histories are meaningful? What does the language used to describe and interpret objects tell us about its histories, and what does it exclude? What are the consequences of those choices?
This project culminated in a public presentation for Historic New England colleagues and staff, and interested community members, on May 5, 2025. But this work remains ongoing and incomplete. Historic New England continues to revise, repair, and recontextualize the harmful legacies of slavery, white supremacy, and colonization embedded in their collection’s objects, archives, and at their historic properties. The History Department at UMass Boston is honored to participate in this crucial ongoing work.
At UMass Boston we are lucky to have a waterfront campus. Thanks to the work of the Friends of the Boston Harborwalk (FBHW) visitors and community members can walk along the shoreline from East Boston to South Boston, and enjoy interpretive signage orienting them to the past and present along this coast. They have undertaken a multi-year effort to add engaging, inclusive, and stylistically consistent interpretive signs along Boston’s 43-mile Harborwalk.
While the Harborwalk physically connects people to resources such as parks, museums, beaches and commercial establishments along the shoreline, it also connects visitors to the histories represented by sites along the walk. The Friends of the Boston Harborwalk signage team works with property owners and all stakeholders to develop content for engaging and inclusive interpretive signs along the Harborwalk.
In spring 2024, public history students in HIST 625 “Interpreting History in Public: Approaches to Public History Practice” collaborated with FBHW to create a Masterplan for the Dorchester sections of the Harborwalk, proposing site-specific interpretive signs that interpret the social, environmental, cultural and economic histories (and present) visible or once visible along the shoreline. Based on research in primary and secondary sources, conversations with stakeholders from our partnering organizations, and most importantly, members of the Dorchester communities who live, work, and play along the shoreline students identified rich stories, visual resources and sites for interpretation along the waterfront from the South Boston-Dorchester line just south of Moakley Park to, and including, Dorchester Bay Basin Bay.
Our historical research and interpretation spanned the years from pre-contact through the 21st century. Our site-based historical research raised questions about the connections between local, regional, and national histories. We considered questions about whose histories matter and to whom. How were specific places meaningful or significant to local communities and the city of Boston in the past, and today? What meanings have different people ascribed to this place? Our exploration of the historical geography and uses of this landscape (and seascape) required us to consider the social, environmental, economic and cultural histories of a wide range of people. The consequences of this history shape the priorities and policies of today, especially as we face the perils of climate change and the impact of development on land, water, public health, and communities.
This project culminated in a public presentation of the Master Plan to FBHW and community members, on May 7, 2024. Since then, the FBHW has used the Master Plan to assist in creating the sign content and work with property owners for design, manufacture, and installation. Boston Harborwalk signage so far can be viewed here, but come back later to explore the Dorchester harbor walk signs!
Known for its association with the battle for political and social rights, Faneuil Hall itself raises a central contradiction, one often overlooked by historical interpretation of this space. The site memorializes the merchant Peter Faneuil, an enslaver who made his money through the transatlantic slave trade, whose riches built the marketplace he gifted to Boston, Over the last decade, artists and activists have called for the renaming of Faneuil Hall. Artists have come forward to propose or install new public art at Faneuil Hall, art that speaks to history in this space, as well as contemporary issues around relevant questions about freedom, social justice, and the role of monuments and public space.
These conversations prompt questions about the art installed in and around this historic public space. Over 40 works of art–paintings and sculptures–are installed in Faneuil Hall’s historic second floor meeting space, the Great Hall. They inspire questions about what this space and place has meant over time and how the city might reimagine this public gallery. What themes and histories might be represented here? What is the meaning of Faneuil Hall in the 21st century, informed by the city’s and the nation’s pasts, as well as the present? Whose stories might appear? What should a 21st century gallery at Faneuil Hall look like?
Prompted by the Boston Art Commission’s interest in using art to engage with broader and more diverse histories associated with the site on which Faneuil Hall sits, students in HIST 625 embarked on a project to consider new historical themes for interpreting history at this site. In the first phase of the work, students researched what we know about the “history” of the Great Hall gallery and its site. This required research in previous studies of the site, and especially the records of Boston from 1740 to the present, to determine:
when and how and by whom the extant artworks were chosen,
the decisions debated and made about choosing artwork over time
the history that is represented and the history that is ignored;
What do the debates/discussion about choosing and installing art for this gallery reveal about the changing meanings and uses of Faneuil Hall, Boston, history, and the nation?
What histories are left out, and how might we tell that history via new installations in the gallery?
In the second phase of the project students reimagined the gallery as one that would reflect a 21st century understanding of the meaning of Faneuil Hall and Boston’s history and the struggles represented at this site. Indeed, the Hall has been a public space theoretically open to use by the public since 1742. A newly imagined Great Hall gallery might include some of the art currently installed, and it could include new art created for this space. A reconceived gallery could showcase and interpret other material culture, such as artifacts and documents. It could feature media pieces that interpret the meaning of the Hall and its significance in Boston’s history. These are just a few examples.
Students worked in teams to write proposals for interpretive plans for creating a 21st century gallery for Faneuil Hall. What would it look like today? What is the message? Who is included? How are they represented? Who chooses? On May 2, 2023, students presented their proposals for new interpretive ideas and strategies and examples in the context of NPS themes and priorities and newer interpretive focus exemplified in their recent wayside panel and an exhibition on slavery in Boston.
Plan of Harvard College buildings, 1784, by student Joshua Green. Harvard University Collection. Harvard University Archives.
Jennifer Pelose has spent time working her way up and around Harvard’s archival repositories since finishing graduate school in 2002. Starting as a grant processor in Harvard’s Countway Library, to her current position as head archivist in charge of archival projects and technical services at Harvard’s University Archives, Pelose has learned a lot of lessons and has wisdom to share about the field.
While getting an undergraduate degree in history, Pelose had an active role in editing and writing for her college’s student newspaper, but after working in an archive she got a new perspective that she felt better suited her. Archival work matched her personality as someone who liked quiet environments behind the scenes, rather than “in the public eye.” Jennifer knew she did not want to be a teacher and thought she could a place in library sciences. Pelose attended Simmons College in Boston, where she received. Her Masters in Library Science and an MA in History.
We got to talking about trends and movements across the field. Pelose identified the More Product Less Process movement, a phrase coined by Mark Green and Dennis Meissner in their article by that same name, for its importance in the field. The article called for archivists to reconstruct the way they process their collections by focusing on reducing backlog and opening collections rather than describing their contents at the item level. Pelose says this article caused quite the movement and continues to do so today. Pelose cited the article as “a lightning rod” for the time, changing to minimal processing and getting collections out there for the public, even if it meant reducing user services. It also shifted resources to public services rather than processing archivists, another big change. Pelose told me she’s known people who have shown up for their first day of work to find a copy of this article sat waiting for them on their desk. Still, despite having embraced this movement in her past positions across different archives, Pelose considers this only one “method,” suggesting that it’s best to look at the needs of the individual archive rather than adhere to a movement.
Pelose also addressed the movement towards digitization; the “digital tsunami,” she joked, is here.. The rush to digitize introduces more challenges in making highly requested records available, such as the WWII records at Harvard. Digitization has forced archivists to start thinking differently about their collections. She says archivists need to treat these records as if they are any other record, but then the added perspective of putting them online. The Harvard University Archives, according to Pelose, plans to have their entire backlog, including all twenty repositories of the university, processed by 2026. Digitization is a great start for making Harvard’s previously restricted records more accessible.
Letter from John Hancock to Mrs. Mary Hancock, 1754 May 1. John Hancock Collection. Harvard University Archives.
On a more personal level, I asked Pelose to share her favorite object or collection that she has worked with. Delighted, Pelose identified two documents, both relating to founding father, John Hancock. She mentioned the letters between him and his sister around the time of her engagement, which revealed typical brother-sister bantering. Hancock complained that his sister hadn’t told him about her engagement in time, and then signed the bottom of the letter with his famously large signature. Pelose laughed and said he must’ve been practicing. She said her other favorite collection were those of Hancock as Harvard’s treasurer during the American Revolution. At that time, he had brought all of the finance books from the university to Philadelphia. This collection reveals that the University sent Hancock letters begging him to pay attention to the books and to pay people accordingly. Unfortunately, John Hancock never answered. Perhaps, Pelose suggested, Hancock was too occupied to care. She said she loved the records of a man having to go to Philadelphia on horseback, take the records from him, and then establish a new treasurer.
Talking to Jennifer Pelose gave me a great opportunity to learn about the journey of an archivist, from the day-to-day to the looming trends and movements within the field as well as the personal narrative of an individual in the field. Pelose’s reflections offered important insight to how career archivists work and think about their and think about their work in the field, and it only made me more interested in the possibility of working in archives. My conversation with Pelose was useful for a brief discussion of Library Science vs. Public History in archives that we had in my class, HIST 626, Introduction to Archives. Pelose also reassured me that many of her colleagues, past and present, have come from Public History; Archives is not an exclusive club.
Tags: Archives, Archives Student, Informational Interview, Jennifer Pelose, Harvard University Archives, More Product Less Process, Library Science
Historic New England (HNE) was founded in 1910 and is the largest regional historic preservation organization in the nation. HNE has preserved over 100 historic houses across five New England states. In addition to the structures, HNE also preserves thousands of objects. Some came to them with a historic home, and others were donated to HNE for preservation. Many of their collections may be viewed on their public-facing website. However, some of the objects in the museum’s collection may be troubling to modern viewers. Many of the objects were created by Westerners who depicted people of African, Asian, or Native American descent in unflattering ways. Thankfully, Historic New England is reassessing how those objects should be described in their captions for the 21st century. This reworking of some of their collection has been the focus of my work as an intern for Historic New England.
I am responsible for reinterpreting two objects in Historic New England’s collection. The first, a piece of wallpaper border manufactured circa 1920, presents a nature scene featuring Native Americans. The second object is a vase made around 1900 in China, depicting a young Chinese boy playing with a fan. Although these two objects look very different from each other, they both present images of people from cultures different from the wealthy White families who displayed them in their homes in Massachusetts in the early 20th century.
Wallpaper border from Simoen-Alexander Jr. House, Northfield, MA. Now in Historic New England’s archive, Haverhill, MA.
This piece of wallpaper border is from the Simeon Alexander Jr. House in Northfield, MA. It is roughly four by 17 inches. It depicts a nature scene on the banks of a calm flowing river where trees and flowers are in full bloom. A waterfowl flies out of the river and observes this tranquil nature scene. Two men are sitting by a fire and a cooking pot as they watch this scene. These men are mostly naked, wearing only a loin cloth and bands around their heads with a single feather sticking out in the back.
In the mid-19th century, as the United States was expanding West, many White wealthy and middle-class Americans believed that Native Americans were an endangered species, subject to destruction by Anglo-Americans. The painter George Catlin, fearing the extinction of Native Americans, decided to paint portraits of critical Indigenous people so that future generations would know what they looked like. In 1842, Catlin remarked, “I have, for many years past, contemplated the noble races of red men who are now spread over these trackless forests and boundless prairies, melting away at the approach of civilization.”[i] Western art in the 19th and early 20th centuries, as did commercially produced materials such as wallpaper, reflected this thinking. The design on this wallpaper places the two indigenous men on the outskirts of civilization. The only refuge left is the edge of nature, where the wild animals roam.
Depicting Native Americans as part of nature was not only an art motif. Similar ideas also shaped the activities of some cultural and social organizations in the early 20th century. For example, the Boy Scouts of America and the Campfire Girls taught children outdoor survival skills, such as starting a fire using only sticks and no matches, and both groups misappropriated Native culture to do this. At campouts, Boy Scouts and Campfire Girls often wore headdresses and slept in teepees. These ceremonies also included “Indian” dances around a fire pit. Such stereotypical and inaccurate depictions reinforced a message that Native Americans and nature were deeply connected.
The identical pair of Chinese vases that I am reinterpreting were displayed in Roseland Cottage in Woodstock, CT, the home of Henry Bowen and his wife, Lucy Tappan. Bowen operated a dry goods business in New York specializing in delicate lace and linens. He became wealthy and built Roseland Cottage as a summer home in 1846. He was a staunch opponent of slavery and ran an abolitionist newspaper, The Independent. Roseland Cottage was passed down through the Bowen family and was eventually entrusted to Historic New England in 1970. The house contained many delicate decorations, including pieces of art from Japan and China. According to Historic New England, the Bowens redecorated Roseland Cottage in the 1880s, filling it with East Asian art, which was all the rave in the United States. The recent 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia introduced many Americans to art from Japan and China for the first time. Possessing decorative art from Japan or China was a status symbol that only the rich could afford.
Vase at Roseland Cottage, Woodstock, CT.
The East Asian objects in Roseland Cottage reflected Western views on this part of the world in the late 19th– early 20th century. Scholar Edward Said coined the term “orientalism” to describe Western views and fascination with Middle and Far East cultures. While there is no evidence that the Bowen/Hunt families misappropriated Asian art or even felt superior to Asian people, the families’ display of Asian art on their mantle reveals their fascination with an “exotic” culture. Let’s look at the vases to understand them better.
A close look at the vases can help us understand them. These porcelain vases were made circa 1900. They both depict an Asian boy shielding his eyes from the sun with a fan. They can be identified as boys because grown men did not wear their hair in buns. Similar figures of a boy with buns playing with a fan can be seen as far back as China’s Jin Dynasty (265-420). These vases may even be an homage to that period. The Jin was also known as the Chin, the origin of the country’s name, China. It is possible that the vases were meant to show “original China” to the Western Market.
The vases also have painted flowers that have special meanings in Chinese culture–chrysanthemums on the stem and peonies at the top of the stem. Chrysanthemums hold many meanings, but because the main image is a child, one can assume that it symbolizes a long and prosperous life here. Longevity was assigned to the flower because it blooms in late autumn when many other flowers die. Peonies also have many meanings in Chinese culture. In the context of the different images on the vases, they could represent wealth, peace, or masculinity. Flower symbolism exists throughout human history, but the association of this vase with China prompted me to research flower symbolism in Chinese culture.
Museums today are grappling with how to display and interpret their collections that depict other cultures. In some instances, such as at the British Museum, many collections from “exotic” civilizations were stolen from their original homelands. Moreover, today museums are coming to terms with language that is now considered racist, like Negro and Indian. Historic New England’s work in redescribing their collections reflects these broader efforts to modernize museums and reinterpret collections. When a piece’s provenance is unknown, one must research around an object to better understand it. We ask questions such as: What symbols are present that may have been missed by a Western viewer in the past? What was Western culture like at the time it was collected? Are there similar objects in other collections? Ultimately, we view objects not just as artwork or collections but as historical records. I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in Historic New England’s essential endeavors.
[i]Stephanie Pratt, American Indians in British Art, 1700-1840, (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005), 125.
Notes:
Berkhoffer, Robert. The White Man’s Indian. New York: Vintage Books, 1978.
Deloria, Philip J. Playing Indian. New Havan: Yale University Press, 1998.
Dirilk, Arif. “Chinese History and the Question of Orientalism.” History and Theory 35, no. 4 (1996): 96-118.
Liu, Mingyu. “Study on Children’s Hair Styles in Children-Playing Picture of Cizhou Kiln in Song and Jin Dynasties.” Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research 537 (2021): 291-296.
