Tag Archive

museums

Apex and Oakland: Partnership for Black History education, part 2

28 May 2019 – Deborah Strahorn, Marcy Breffle and Adina Langer

public engagement, TPH 40.3, community history, memory, African American history, collaboration, Black museums series, museums, education, race, The Public Historian, methods

Editors’ Note: This post is part of a History@Work series that complements The Public Historian, volume 40, number 3, which is about the history of the field of Black Museums. This is part 2 of a two-part post written by educators at Atlanta’s APEX Museum: African American Panoramic Experience and Historic Oakland Cemetery, with questions posed by History@Work editor Adina Langer (AL) and answers given by Deborah Strahorn (DS) of APEX Museum and Marcy Breffle (MB) of Historic Oakland Cemetery. Read More

Apex and Oakland: Partnership for Black History education, part 1

21 May 2019 – Deborah Strahorn, Marcy Breffle and Adina Langer

The Public Historian, methods, TPH 40.3, public engagement, community history, African American history, memory, Black museums series, collaboration, museums, education

Editors’ Note: This post is part of a History@Work series that complements The Public Historian volume 40, number 3, which is about the history of the field of Black Museums. The piece, written by educators at Atlanta’s APEX Museum: African American Panoramic Experience and Historic Oakland Cemetery, considers the collaboration between these two institutions around the interpretation of African American history within the context of the emergence of the field of Black Museums described in Jeff Hayward and Christine Larouche’s article “The Emergence of the Field of African American Museums” and African American history more generally. Read More

Repair work at the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum

16 May 2019 – Sonya Laney

community engagement, 2019 annual meeting, African American history, NCPH 2019 Awards, museums, education, race

Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of reflective posts written by winners of awards given out at the NCPH 2019 annual meeting in Hartford, Connecticut. Sonya Laney received the New Professional award.

In 1902, Charlotte Hawkins Brown took the train from her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts to the rural town of Sedalia, North Carolina. Read More

Project Showcase: “For Comfort and Convenience”: Poverty and Material Culture

09 May 2019 – Holly A. Hartlerode 1

projects, social justice, community history, sense of place, museums

In a February blog post for History@Work, Kristin O’ Brassill-Kulfan asked public historians to think about the presentation of poverty in museum settings. That same month, the Wood County Historical Center (WCHC) in Bowling Green, Ohio opened a new exhibit titled For Comfort and Convenience: Public Charity in Ohio By Way of the Poor Farm. Read More

Veterans’ perspectives, and the great task remaining

08 March 2019 – Jessica L. Adler

methods, NEH, memory, collaboration, museums, education, government, oral history, projects, veterans

Army nurse Norma J. Griffiths-Boris returned from Vietnam not just with haunting memories of unpreventable death—smells of burned flesh, sights of traumatic head wounds—but also with a powerful impression of her non-traditional work environment. At war, she and fellow nurses held positions of authority. Read More

“Voting in Shelby County”: a curator’s perspective

04 March 2019 – Sarah A. McDonald 2

public engagement, community history, museums, government, politics, race, gender/sexuality, local

The Shelby County Historical Society and Museum (SCHSM) is a small organization situated in rural western Iowa. For over fifty years, the SCHSM has stood as a point of pride for community members. Founded by local citizens eager to collect and preserve the history of Shelby County, the museum’s collection consists mainly of items, ranging from household objects to antique cars, related to life in rural Iowa. Read More

The making of James Madison’s Montpelier’s “The Mere Distinction of Colour” Q&A: Part 6

01 March 2019 – editors

collaboration, TPH 40.4, museums, MDOC Q&A, scholarship, Montpelier, race, The Public Historian, slavery, methods, public engagement, community history, sense of place

Editor’s Note: Want to know more about what it takes to develop an award-winning exhibition about the lives of enslaved people at a founding father’s historic site? We did, too! In this series, we will learn more about what went into the new permanent exhibition The Mere Distinction of Colour (MDOC) at James Madison’s Montpelier (JMM) in Virginia. Read More

The making of James Madison’s Montpelier’s “The Mere Distinction of Colour” Q&A: Part 5

22 February 2019 – editors

methods, public engagement, community history, sense of place, collaboration, TPH 40.4, museums, MDOC Q&A, scholarship, Montpelier, race, The Public Historian, slavery

Does public history work itself require repair?

20 February 2019 – Paul C. Thistle

2019 annual meeting, museums, profession, consultants, employment, funding, NCPH

The “Repair Work” theme of the 2019 NCPH Hartford, CT conference immediately makes me think about the need to repair prevailing working conditions in the public history field itself. I strongly believe this work must become part and parcel of the notion among public historians about the need for “repairing a broken world.” Read More