Uncategorized – Page 2 – Public History at UMass Boston

Category: Uncategorized (page 2 of 3)

Two women paint portraits in the foreground. In the background, a large portrait of a woman with plants covering her eyes sits on an easel.

Internship: No Such Thing as a Perfect Interview: Artists-in-Residence at Historic Sites, no. 2

By Rebecca Beit-Aharon

Hello again!

In my first post, I talked about the origin of the research project I’m working on, including how we identified artist-in-residence programs at historic sites across the country. Of course, knowing programs exist—or existed—isn’t enough.

As you might have guessed, connecting with the sites we identified had mixed results. In many cases, my supervisor Ken Turino had personal connections thanks to his extensive public history career. I was able to connect directly to a few contacts of my own. In Professor Jane Becker’s public history practicum in Spring 2021, I worked closely with Eric Hansen-Plass of Boston National Historical Park, who confirmed that there hadn’t been an artist-in-residence program there for years. Over the summer, a colleague at the Old North Church clued me in to Ryan Ahlwardt’s song “Granary” about Paul Revere. While not a result of an AIR program, the song and music video are still fantastic examples of public history by a contemporary artist.

While some site administrators did make introductions, I mostly reached out to site personnel cold through emails, phone calls, and contact forms. I was impressed by how many responding staff were interested in our work—the ones that weren’t were generally closed or understaffed due to the pandemic. I’m particularly sorry to have missed out on interviewing staff and artists from Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site, which was closed along with the rest of the Diné (Navajo) Nation due to the pandemic; I was hoping to learn how a site that prioritized Native artists—and functioned under multiple governing bodies—ran an AIR program.

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We began the interview process by creating two parallel sets of questions: one for artists-in-residence and another for site administrators, curators, and other historic site staff who worked with AIRs. These questions were broken down roughly in terms of the timeline of creating/participating in an AIR program, starting with questions about the genesis of the program, moving on to selecting an artist and the residency itself, and closing out with final products, evaluations, and lessons learned.

Overall, we interviewed twenty-five site administrators and twenty-two artists from twenty-two sites across the country. These sites ranged in size (both physical and budgetary), but there was a notable concentration of sites in the northeast—a huge bulk of our interview sites are in New England or New York. We’re not sure if this actually reflects reality or results from our northeastern network.

A graph showing the number of full-time staff at interviewed historic sites.

Interviewing artists and site administrators—in other words, growing my network!—was a pleasure. I love talking to people about both art and history, so learning about that in tandem both practically and creatively was a joy.

While there’s no such thing as a perfect interview, certain practices helped them go smoothly. As a stickler for structure, I generally sent the interview questions in advance and followed them closely. While a more conversational style would have been more natural, I didn’t want to miss any questions. No one I spoke to had answers to every question, whether because some weren’t relevant or because institutional knowledge had been lost over time. My notes, at least, were extremely easy to organize and analyze once we hit the data analysis phase.

I spoke to people from all sorts of sites, and I ended up interviewing just about all of the artists and administrators we spoke to connected to the National Park Service. As a government institution, there are more regulations to deal with, but some of the near-universal traits of NPS AIR programs were, frankly, mind-boggling. For example, a much higher percentage of NPS sites treat AIRs as volunteers than other historic sites do (and seem almost surprised that one might pay an AIR). There’s also a clause in very fine print on the NPS volunteer contract that gives the government rights to any artwork/etc created while volunteering.

The AIR-as-volunteer model has serious drawbacks. Unpaid artists must donate not only their work but their valuable time, and only artists with enough disposable income—which leaves out a significant portion of artists, particularly emerging artists and economically disadvantaged artists—can realistically participate. By not paying the artists, these sites reinforce the notion that art is not a proper profession: as one artist pointed out, sites pay professionals to restore woodwork, artwork, and more, and they pay them at professional rates. Not paying (and underpaying) artists devalues their valuable work. Sites lose out too. Minority artists are more likely to be economically disadvantaged. One of the benefits of AIR programs is their ability to bring new eyes to historic sites traditionally interpreted with narrow lenses. Minority voices are vital to expanding the stories told, and AIR programs are one way to reimagine sites, as Historic New England did with the portrait of Cyrus Bruce by Richard Haynes Jr. that I wrote about previously.

New Bedford Whaling National Historic Park’s AIR program provides a notable exception to this apparent “rule.” Here, the program is run by historic-site-AIR superstar Lindsay E. Compton, who created AIR programs at two other NPS sites: Congaree National Park and San Antonio Mission National Historical Site. New Bedford Whaling NHP provides an incredible example of a robust AIR program that pays its artists, taps into their community’s talent, and creates programming and art that speaks to varying and deep themes at the site and in the community. The current (when I interviewed Lindsay) artist-in-residence was doing a project on Polynesian women in whaling. Lindsay did in depth research to support the artist. For a more community-based example, April Jakubec, the AIR from January-March 2020, created four large portraits of women in the community who self-identified as having mental illness/struggles, sparking rich discussions around mental health. As an attached workshop, women were invited to paint a self-portrait and adorn the art with flowers, gems, and more to demonstrate different areas of healing (i.e. flowers over mouth: someone felt silenced).

A ground of women stand and kneel with painted self-portraits, many adorned with painted plants or flowers. — *April Jakubec’s AIR workshop in 2020. Courtesy of New Bedford Whaling National Historic Park.*

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Check back for the final installment, where I’ll talk about data analysis, preparing a panel agenda, and presenting at conferences for NEMA, Connecticut Local History Organization, and AASLH.

Collections and Connections: Interning at the Shirley-Eustis House

December 22, 2021 / Heidi Gengenbach / 0 Comments

By Rachel Hoyle

I have enjoyed nearly every single aspect of my internship this semester at the Shirley-Eustis House in Roxbury. My duties have led me to a much deeper understanding of how museums operate, from the mundane – hanging Christmas lights for an evening event – to the glamorous preparation of the house for use as a backdrop in multiple documentaries. The site’s Executive Director, Suzy Buchanan, has been gracious enough to let me trail behind her on Fridays, learning exactly how she does what she does.

However, when I use the word “nearly,” there is one particular aspect of my internship that has led to frustration: the lack of original sources to catalog for my developing web exhibit. Given that my exhibit will focus on enslaved Africans at the house, most of whom do not even have their names written in the historical record, it is not surprising that no artifacts of their existence have survived the past three hundred years. Add to that injustice the constantly changing structure and use of the Shirley-Eustis House (at one point it was even used as a “home for wayward girls”), and it is a recipe for the reproduction rather than the display of original artifacts.

The exterior of the Shirley-Eustis House in 1940, nearly forty years prior to its restoration. As is clear from this image, the house was in very bad condition at one point in time. Photo courtesy the United States National Archives.

It is not as if I am the first person studying African enslavement to encounter this problem. The staff at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), when collecting the first artifacts for display in the museum, ventured around the nation to track down relevant objects. Physical artifacts of African American history had often been either lost, passed around to various families, or stored in people’s attics for generations.[1] It was not negligence keeping these items stowed away – it was an instinct of preservation. Many African Americans certainly knew the value of these artifacts. Rex Ellis, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs at the NMAAHC, recalled the moment he first came face to face with the Bible of infamous Black slave revolt leader Nat Turner. The woman who gifted it to the NMAAHC from its longtime place in her family’s Virginia home remarked that “It was time for it to leave here…because there’s so much blood on it.”[2] It was not until the NMAAHC’s founding that many of these artifacts were seen outside the confines of a single family or community, because there were few museums and historic sites willing or able to display them with a mindful acknowledgement of the artifacts’ troublesome and sometimes disturbing histories.

A page from revolutionary and slave revolt leader Nat Turner’s Bible, which is now permanently at the NMAAHC. Photo courtesy the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Once it was clear that there would be a NMAAHC, Founding Director Lonnie Bunch began a groundbreaking campaign to collect these artifacts. Under his “Saving African American Treasures” initiative, Bunch deployed conservationists and other museum professionals around the United States in an effort to identify and save artifacts protected and preserved by generations of Black families. This campaign unearthed tens of thousands of artifacts for the NMAAHC; most were free-will donations made by people who decided their personal collections were finally able to be seen and respected in the manner they necessitated.[3] This distinction between a lack of material culture and a preservation of the very same culture is essential. How many other artifacts are still hidden in an attic, trunk, or basement because museums and historic sites have not been ready to display them respectfully? How many of those relate to the experiences of enslaved Africans?

These stories shaped my thinking as I considered the use of artifacts in my exhibit. Unfortunately, I did not have the time or resources that Bunch and the NMAAHC had to track down material culture relating directly to the house or its enslaved occupants. While there are surviving manuscripts and records of Black occupants of the Shirley-Eustis House, written documents alone do not hold the same meanings or have the same impact as three dimensional artifacts in an exhibition. These documents are most often from the perspective of white, wealthy colonists, while physical artifacts were used directly by enslaved people. The history documents and objects carry is the same, but the perspectives they offer on that history are vastly different. Even neighborhood oral histories, which provide us with engaging ideas of how the house’s story has evolved over time and connect us to individuals’ experiences and stories, have a different impact on visitors than material culture.

It was Suzy Buchanan, the house’s Executive Director, who inspired my ideas for how we might incorporate artifacts into an exhibition on the site’s African American histories. She first mentioned that a large iron washing kettle sat in the basement of the Shirley-Eustis House, right in front of the public restrooms. While it was not original to the house, she qualified, it could at least serve to illustrate some of the work likely performed by enslaved people in the eighteenth century. If that was reasonable, she said, I could include it in my exhibit. I could hardly contain my excitement. There was one part of my problem rather expertly solved.

Immediately I realized that the Shirley-Eustis House also had an unexpectedly large collection of eighteenth and nineteenth century historical tools and gardening equipment in the attic of our carriage house. While we may not have been able to tell the stories of those enslaved at the house directly through surviving artifacts, we could still use items in our collection to interpret their lives. It is important to note that there are limitations to using nineteenth century artifacts to interpret eighteenth century events – much changed over that century regarding labor and enslavement. Interpreting these artifacts is still worthwhile, even if I acknowledge their weaknesses in my interpretation. In this concrete experience, I realized the importance of a detailed and up to date collections catalogue and the interpretive possibilities that can result.

An 18^th or 19^th century wooden mortar and pestle in the collections at the Shirley-Eustis House. These and other kitchen tools illustrate the constant labor required in operating a household like the Shirley family’s in colonial Massachusetts. Photo taken by the author.

Two yokes for human use dating to the 18^th or 19^th century found in the collections at the Shirley-Eustis House. These two objects illustrate the human labor that went into daily operations at the house, even though they are not original to the house itself. Photo taken by the author.

Suzy also reminded me that we at the Shirley-Eustis House are not isolated from other museums. One benefit of designing an online exhibit is the potential to use collections beyond your own by linking other sites’ collections into the digital exhibit. Considering this option helped me realize that creating a rich and informative site on the history of enslavement is my priority for this exhibit, not simply drawing visitors to the Shirley-Eustis House and its unique resources alone. If our exhibit leads visitors to another site with more relevant artifacts, then I have done my job well.

The dispersion of artifacts from the Shirley-Eustis House likely occurred due to changing ownership, renovation, and repeated episodes of the house’s disrepair. It may be impossible to know what became of the site’s original eighteenth century artifacts, but this does not render its staff incapable of interpreting a broader history of the house and its residents, including its laborers. I hope that my exhibit does justice to the lives of enslaved Africans and their roles in local and national histories.

[1] https://sah.columbia.edu/content/prizes/tony-horwitz-prize/2021-lonnie-g-bunch-iii

[2] Vinson Cunningham, “Making a Home for Black History,” The New Yorker, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/29/analyzing-the-national-museum-of-african-american-history-and-culture.

[3] Vinson Cunningham, “Making a Home for Black History.”

The Significance of an Individual: Developing Exhibits in Historic House Museums

December 16, 2021 / Heidi Gengenbach / 0 Comments

By Meghan Arends

Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site. Photograph taken upon my initial visit in August.

Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site is owned and operated by the National Park Service. Built in 1759, the Georgian style house became the headquarters of George Washington during the Siege of Boston in 1775. It eventually became the home of American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow when it was bought by his father-in-law as a wedding gift.[1] From then on, the house became an important center of politics, society, and the arts.

The estate drew me in because of my interest in material culture. The collections held at the Longfellow House are numerous and diverse, representing the vast culture the family had the privilege of experiencing during their time. My internship here offered me a satisfying and richly challenging professional experience that expands past encounters with collections.

My overall internship goals were both practical and intellectual. In-depth research of extended family member Brevet Captain Nathan Appleton Jr. for the upcoming temporary exhibit “Longfellow Family in the Civil War” sat at the center of my experience. This involved familiar tasks, including online and off-site research into Nathan’s life, writing exhibit labels for artifacts and, eventually, producing web content to further expand upon his life as a Union soldier. This project required an intense focus on a singular subject and his place within the broader American history, which I don’t always get the chance to explore. Rather than generalized concepts and assumptions, an individual’s history can reveal their impact on the world and vise-versa.

Photographs of Brevet Captain Nathan Appleton Jr., “Appleton Family Papers,” Massachusetts Historical Society. Left: Nathan as a Harvard Student, shortly before entering the war. Right: Nathan after initial enlistment in 1863 as 2nd Lieutenant. Photographs courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

The most exciting part of the internship was certainly the weeklong research trip I took to the Massachusetts Historical Society, which maintains the Appleton Family Papers. Hundreds of documents shed light on the life of Nathan and his family in the years surrounding and including the Civil War. The richness and extent of the resources meant that I had to prioritize materials within the extensive collection. I had to determine which sources were most important to the themes and questions of my project, putting others aside. Previous research endeavors have never offered me such a volume of sources. My week spent at MHS taught me the importance of guiding themes in a research project, which is relevant for both historians and public historians.

The professional and practical aspects of the internship are among its greatest rewards, especially the communication and networking opportunities I’ve had with professionals in the field of public history. I attended weekly meetings with the rest of the site staff; they’ve provided an invaluable glance into the world of historic sites and their daily operations. The isolation of an internship can make it seem like the project you’re working on is the only one, but in reality, there are dozens of programs in development simultaneously. Nothing has expanded my personal field of public history knowledge more than hearing from other staff members about the various projects they are working on each day and their contributions to the site’s significance. A historic site can’t rely on one program or strategy to maintain relevance and interest. Diversity in programming and site history helps them serve multiple audiences and their needs.

The internship offered me opportunities to work on new skills, such as writing labels for exhibits. My natural instinct as a historian is to take my time crafting an argument and presenting evidence. That luxury isn’t available when writing exhibit labels, where you must communicate significance and meaning in relatively few words. General introductions that can’t explain the significance of an artifact in the context of the exhibit provide little substance for the audience. We read Beverly Serrell’s guide, Exhibit Labels, in class, but now I’ve had the chance to put her advice into practice and take on the challenges of writing exhibit text to tell stories and connect the past and present.[2] This is done all within 100 words written for the public, not scholars.

Process of writing and editing exhibit labels. 1. A short narrative with a list of the medals (too long) 2. A more narrative approach 3. Revision after separating a medal, requiring a new title 4. Continuous edits that create an interpretive narrative rather than just a list of facts

It’s inspiring to think that the work I’m currently doing isn’t just for a grade in a class. Instead, I hope to leave a mark on my field, to teach people and help them connect to the lives of this family. Eventually, this project will become part of a larger exhibit that will open in the spring of 2022. My work is not yet finished, as I will be helping with the design and execution of that larger exhibit for my capstone project next semester. I’m looking forward to identifying more stories that answer questions, inspire new ones, and entertain the public while pushing them to consider new ideas in the ever-evolving databank that is our history.

[1] Beverly Serrell, Exhibit Labels: An Interpretive Approach (Walnut Creek: Alta Mira Press, 1996), 19.

[2] “Longfellow House Washington’s Headquarters,” Home Page, National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/long/index.htm.

Internship: A Fresh Perspective on Local History

December 24, 2020 / Heidi Gengenbach / 1 Comment

By Tom Begley

We rarely have the opportunity to learn a city’s history through the perspectives of women. Until recently, the everyday lives and achievements of women have not been well documented or celebrated, silenced or pushed to the margins. Since the mid-20^th century, historians and public history institutions have increasingly worked to fix this, searching the records and highlighting stories of women and other marginalized populations. During my internship with Lighting the Way: Historic Women of the South Coast (LTW) I worked on a new educational tool for the program and in the process learned important pieces of the history of New Bedford, Massachusetts through the inspiring stories of women of the city. It became clear how the city was shaped by their activism, organization, and passion to improve their communities.

Since 2018, the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s initiative LTW has highlighted women from Massachusetts’ South Coast, the region stretching from Cape Cod to the Rhode Island border. LTW seeks “to explore the impact of historical women from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds throughout history” by “unearthing remarkable stories of women’s callings that required grit, tenacity, and enduring commitment to their families, careers and communities,” (www.historicwomensouthcoast.org). With thought provoking programs, online profiles, a mobile app, educator and school group resources, walking tours, forums, public art displays, and community civic engagement campaigns, LTW invites people to learn about their local history through the stories of women.

Lighting the Way. Courtesy of New Bedford Whaling Museum.

Working with LTW coordinator Cathy Saunders, my project was to create a mobile tour driven by an overarching narrative to explore a specific theme in the city’s history. Rhode Tour, a joint initiative between Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, Brown University’s Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, and Rhode Island Historical Society, will host the tour. Rhode Tour is a smartphone app and website that brings stories and tours to the palm of the user in an engaging display, (www.rhodetour.org). The platform also serves as a digital exhibit space presenting “big ideas” and telling history through multimedia, essays, and links to additional resources such as articles and videos. Joining Rhode Tour will extend LTW’s reach and mission to the thousands of users who access the website and app each year.

I began my work by identifying themes in the collection of 100 profiles of women available on the LTW website. LTW intends to connect the tour to Massachusetts civic curriculum standards. With this in mind the long tradition of women activists and organizers started to become apparent. From abolitionists to PTA members to elected officials, women have worked to improve their South Coast communities and beyond. This realization brought us to the theme for the tour – “Organizing New Bedford: The Women Who Mobilized Change.”

Creating a shortlist of potential tour stops was the first hurdle to overcome. Rhode Tour suggests 6-8 stops and with so many fascinating LTW stories it was hard to choose only a handful of women to feature. To narrow the list and meet the requirement we established a set of criteria. We looked for women who spent the majority of their careers in New Bedford, motivated others to create change, and had several types of multimedia available to help tell the story. Through conversations with Cathy and LTW advisory committee members, the list eventually met the target with 6 tour stops highlighting the work of 7 women: Elizabeth Carter Brooks, Jennie Horne, Rosalind Poll Brooker, Rosemary Tierney, Eula Mendes, Polly Johnson, and Mary Santos Barros.

The Lighting the Way website (www.historicwomensouthcoast.org) features over 100 profiles of South Coast women, education resources, and a self-guided walking tour. Courtesy of New Bedford Whaling Museum.

After selecting the women, we sought appropriate locations for each tour stop. Some were readily apparent such as New Bedford City Hall for Rosalind Poll Brooker and Rosemary Tierney, the first women elected City Councilor and mayor, respectively. Others were more difficult because the places associated with the stories no longer exist or have become private residences. The textile mill where strike leader Eula Mendes worked has been torn down, as was the community center Jennie Horne directed. We also had to consider the current status of neighborhoods and whether it was appropriate to encourage people to visit. The historic areas of the city are surrounded by active neighborhoods and we wanted to be respectful of residents’ privacy. For guidance I turned to people more familiar with the city than me.

The final step was to write each tour stop. The existing LTW profiles served as the foundation as I added new information and reshaped text to focus on the aspect of the woman’s life that exemplified our theme of organizing for change. The realities of researching women’s history were uncovered during this stage. Sources are limited, yet by looking closely at the silences stories start to emerge. We also had the great fortune of connecting with family members who provided a wealth of information about their mothers that wasn’t available otherwise.

The content experts involved with LTW were all incredibly gracious with their time and knowledge as I worked on the project. In particular Jan da Silva (New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park), Lee Blake (New Bedford Historical Society), Mary Smoyer (Boston Women’s Heritage Trail), and Ann O’Leary (NBWM Emily Bourne Research Fellow) provided detailed notes on appropriate locations and storylines to include in the tour. Overall, I owe my positive experience to Cathy Saunders who guided me through the process and shared her public history expertise to ensure that I considered the many different factors in order to properly share these women’s stories.

Recently, one of the LTW committee members, a lifelong resident of New Bedford, shared that she loves her city and was thrilled to see this “Organizing New Bedford” tour bring long deserved attention to the work these women did to make the city a better place. I hope others from New Bedford feel the same way and that this project may inspire students to get involved in issues important to them. It was an honor to work on this project and play a small part in furthering LTW’s educational mission. Not only did I enjoy sharpening my skills as a public history practitioner, but as a student of history, it was especially impactful to learn about New Bedford through the deeds of these amazing women.

Professor Profile: Nick Juravich

December 11, 2020 / Heidi Gengenbach / 0 Comments

Nick Juravich (he/him/his)

nicholas.juravich@umb.edu

Nick is an Assistant Professor of History and Labor Studies and the Associate Director of the Labor Resource Center

Historical Interests: Urban history, women’s/gender history, the history of education, and the history of social movements (particularly the Black freedom struggle in the United States)

Classes: At the undergraduate level, Nick teaches Touring the City: An Introduction to Public History (182), Labor and Working-Class History in the US (210L), US History Since 1877 (266), Work & Education (275L), and Working-Class Boston (390L). At the grad level, he teaches primarily in our public history program, offering courses including Introduction to Public History and Public Memory (620), Oral History (688), and Thesis/Capstone Prep (690)

Nick grew up in Amherst, MA. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago. He then went to the UK to pursue a Masters of Philosophy in Economic and Social History at Oxford. From there, he and his partner moved to Brooklyn, where he worked in the public schools doing health and fitness education for several years before starting his PhD at Columbia. Throughout his studies, he has focused on the history of wherever he has been based, most often on labor movements and protest campaigns. After he received his PhD from Columbia, he started a two-year Public History post-doc in the Center for Women’s History at the New York Historical Society where he gained an extensive hands on education about Public History in all its forms from historians, museum educators and curators. Following that, he came to UMass Boston last year.

One of Nick’s favorite things he has done in his brief time at UMass Boston has been teaching the Labor and Working-Class History Survey. This broad course brings together students from across the university and utilizes the resources of the school, incorporating archival work and guest speakers for the board of our Labor Resource Center. Nick sees it as “the best of UMB in miniature.” Nick lives with his partner and their two children, born Christmas and Christmas eve. He has been a distance runner all his life and loves running the Neponset River in Dorchester, often with a neon yellow double jogging stroller.

Favorite Historical Story (at the moment): “I’ve always known Frank Murphy as the New Deal governor of Michigan who was swept into office in FDR’s 1936 landslide and promptly called out the National Guard to keep the peace and hold off GM’s goons during the Flint Sit-Down Strikes (a truly remarkable moment, given the National Guard’s long history as a strikebreaking force). Just this fall I realized that FDR appointed the same Frank Murphy to the Supreme Court in 1940, where he promptly issued a famous, stinging dissent in the Korematsu case (in which the court shamefully upheld Japanese incarceration during WWII). I don’t know a whole lot else about Frank Murphy, but in two incredibly consequential moments of US history, he did the right thing.”

Advice for students: “It’s a tough time for teaching, learning, and researching. Be kind to yourself and one another, be creative about finding sources and ways to engage them, and make time for yourself away from screens whenever possible. If you’re finding yourselves completely overwhelmed and exhausted by working remotely (feeling like it’s twice the work for half the product), I can assure you that many professors, including yours truly, are in exactly the same boat. Let us know how we can help. Normally I’d say “swing by my office and say hello sometime!” but in lieu of that, I’m always glad to hear from students! Find me at nicholas.juravich@umb.edu.”