Meet your museum colleagues from sites around New England! It’s often too easy for colleagues to feel isolated in their own institutions—we hope this feature will help close the gap. We also hope that it reinforces your own joy in your work and encourages you to recognize your own positive impacts.
Interview with Historic Newton's Director Lisa Dady and Cynthia Cowan, Exhibit Curator & Designer of Finding Pamela exhibit and Manager of the Durant-Kenrick House & Grounds and Anne Larner Educator.
Cynthia Cowan
What is one of your early memories of a museum? Did you both always want to work in the museum field?
CC: My earliest museum memories are probably from the Houston Museum of Natural Science – the dinosaurs, the Hall of Gems, the Egyptian exhibit, and of course the Planetarium. I remember being in awe of the giant dinosaur fossils, and I definitely went through a phase of wanting to be a paleontologist. I came to museum work in a roundabout way, though. I'm trained as a historian but also as an educator, and I spent a long time working in the standardized testing industry. But I began to realize at some point how much I missed having history in my life, and that's when I came to work for Historic Newton, six years ago.
LD: It was known as the “French Fort” in Syracuse, NY. (Its actual name was Sainte Marie Among the Iroquois but Google tells me it has transformed into the Ska-nonh Great Law of Peace Center – I’m fascinated to learn more). As a child, it was the first-person interpretation, the open hearth fires, the “living history” that struck me vividly. I understand that first-person interpretation has a bad reputation among some museum professionals, but when done well, there is no denying its impact on the visitor (life-long in some cases).
How have the events of the last few years (covid-19 pandemic, social justice movements, elections, etc. ) influenced your organization's priorities?
CC: Since COVID-19 hit, we've become very focused on opportunities to connect with people outside the walls of our museum. We have so many tools and opportunities to connect, and while that was true before the pandemic, I think the pandemic really changed people's perceptions of the possibilities for that kind of engagement. The "Finding Pamela" exhibit was originally imagined as a physical exhibit, but shifting to produce it in an online form has opened it up for so many folks to be able to engage with, people who otherwise never would have had access. We were delighted to receive a second round of funding that will enable us to also produce the physical exhibit – which we'll make available as a traveling exhibit – but we probably would not have generated the online version were it not for the pandemic, and that, in hindsight, would have been a big missed opportunity.
LD: While recent movements for racial justice have brought a sharper sense of urgency and significance to our work, Historic Newton has been focused for some time now on expanding the narratives we present within Newton history. (We try to make sure all months are Black History Month at HN.) So, it didn’t take current events, such as the invigoration of the Blacks Lives Matter movement after the murder of George Floyd, to spur us to keep diversity and equity in mind and to commit to digging into the under-told stories of BIPOC Newtonians. At that time, though, I did observe a sudden hunger for what we had to offer. It seemed we could assume a greater level of interest among the public at large, and we had specific examples – many Newton Public School teachers reached out for programs and curriculum on Black history; more than one local organization asked us to do our Black history lecture as part of their internal DEIA training. It’s gratifying to see this receptiveness, but I wonder if it will wane. Current events do guide us, at the very least in our choices for social media content.
Can you elaborate on how Historic Newton came to create the exhibit "Finding Pamela: Writing a New History" which introduces viewers to Pamela Sparhawk, “a formerly enslaved Black woman” in Newton, Massachusetts?
CC: When I first came to Historic Newton as an educator, we were telling the version of Pamela's story that appears in Francis Jackson's 1854 history of Newton. But there were aspects of the story that didn't sit quite right with me, as a historian of slavery, and when I began digging a little deeper, I started to find evidence that Francis Jackson got parts of the story wrong. In early 2020, shortly before the pandemic hit, we saw an opportunity to apply for funding through the 400 Years of African American History Commission for a project that would uplift new narratives in Black history, and Pamela's story certainly fit the bill. We proposed to do further research into her life and the lives of some of her contemporaries, and we were extremely honored to be awarded that grant. The online exhibit and its companion lecture, "Writing a New History: Recovering Stories of Slavery and Freedom," were the result.
What has the reception been like for this exhibit?
CC: It's been fantastic. We've gotten a tremendous positive response, both in our immediate local community and beyond. Folks are really fascinated by her story and what it took to be able to tell it right. I’ve also been delighted to get to speak to groups in our field about what it takes to do this work, and I’m heartened by the enthusiasm other institutions have for pursuing similar projects.
Have staff or the site experienced any criticism for being more transparent of your town’s history?
CC: With this project, I don't believe we've had any pushback at all, which is exciting and affirming. I'm a historian, so I believe history is always worth trying to tell more accurately, with better detail, wherever you can, so I can't say I'd be bothered by criticism over greater transparency even if we were getting any.
Which stakeholders have had a voice in the exhibit?
CC: In some ways, the most important stakeholders are ones we can't identify – Pamela Sparhawk's descendants. We hope one day that giving them a voice in how her story is told may be possible, but we also hope in the meantime to do her story justice, for her and for them. In a broader sense, though, that makes the Black community at large stakeholders in the legacy of her story, and this is where being a historically white organization makes things tough. As a historian of slavery, I'm acutely conscious that being a white woman means there are aspects of her experience I will never fully appreciate. Even when you have relationships in the community and when you can bring in a top-notch Black scholar to consult – I was enormously grateful to have had the input of Kyera Singleton, Director of the Royall House and Slave Quarters and a Black scholar of the experience of women enslaved in domestic service, without whose perspective and labor the project would not have been the same – that doesn’t address the fundamental issue. Bottom line: Our field still has a diversity problem, and while we can’t wait to tell these stories until we can bring more diverse stakeholders on board, we also have to be consciously working toward uplifting museum professionals of color and cultivating our institutions to be places where they can contribute and thrive.
The exhibit has an area on the website noting “Do You Recognize These People?” – what decisions went into having this included on the site?
CC: This section is a direct response to an interaction I had in my first few months at Historic Newton, back in 2016. We had a guest who visited the Durant-Kenrick House and Grounds to look at our exhibit material on Titus, a man once enslaved there whose particular story is unique in Massachusetts history, and he came out asking if we knew anything more about Titus, saying, "there is a story like this in my family." We were not ever able to follow up well enough to determine whether he was connected to Titus, but it was a powerful reminder that oral history, and the stories that are passed down in families, can be significant resources in doing this kind of work of historical recovery. Part of telling Pamela Sparhawk's story is realizing that sometimes there *are* documents from the lives of enslaved people centuries ago, but the sad truth is that that isn't always the case. But if the white establishment didn't document Black lives effectively, that shouldn't keep us from looking at ways that Black families did. So I wanted to make sure that if the descendants of Pamela or of anyone else whose story we tell in that exhibit saw their own family represented there, we had an invitation right there on the page for them to connect with us. That would be an opportunity I didn't want to risk missing.
What might you suggest to museums of all sizes and types that would like to be more transparent with their history and tell more inclusive stories?
LD: Don’t give up. Sometimes it takes years for the research and stories to percolate and for the projects to make themselves evident. Always be open to change and willing to redirect priorities. As we were developing our organization’s new strategic plan, completed in March 2021, I threw down the challenge for HN to “become experts on 400 years of Black history in Newton.” (Wisely, the wording changed to build comprehensive expertise on 400… acknowledging that the work of history is never final.) I was inspired by the Pamela Sparhawk project combined with the good work that various staff were doing on late 20th century Black history. We had the chronological bookends and I wanted to fill in the centuries. This major goal was in part possible because of the leap of faith we made earlier with the Sparhawk project. While we received a grant to fund Cynthia’s time to research and write, that did mean that other tasks were not getting done. Moreover, we weren’t going to see a financial return on this investment (at least not directly and not soon) and that had to be okay. Since we released the online exhibit, we are realizing “soft” returns in terms of public programming, marketing exposure, expanded knowledge for school programs, updates to a current exhibit, and fodder for future exhibits.
The other reason we consider Black history to be core to our work is the legacy of active abolitionism, and earlier of slavery, at both of our historic sites. Jackson Homestead was a stop on the Underground Railroad and the Jackson family was very active in anti-slavery and other social justice movements. The Kenrick family of our Durant-Kenrick House and Grounds was also ardently anti-slavery. With that foundation, we extrapolated that we have an obligation to carry on the work of the Jacksons, the Kenricks, and the enslaved and free Black people at these sites by focusing on this history up to the present. It’s important to dig deep and to balance, though, for Newton's story is so much more. I'm really proud of the way our organization has for some time now made it a priority to also center Black and Indigenous narratives in the history we tell, and of our work to present a fuller history through exploring the stories of other historically marginalized groups in Newton's history.
But our peers in the museum field don’t need to be certified sites in the Underground Railroad Network to Freedom to commit to working on this history, right? Any historical society, in any community, is responsible for telling the stories of the broadest array of its people. Therefore, BIPOC history, for example, would be seamlessly part of their mission. It seems redundant to say Black history is American history, but I guess we still need to say that.
CC: Yes, absolutely, Lisa. And on that last point, the thing about history is that if you've got the evidence, the sources, it kind of shouldn't matter what people think. That is the history. It does mean you have to have a clear message and stay on-message about why it's important to tell this history and how you know what this history is – that's part of why the companion lecture to the "Finding Pamela" exhibit is about how we did the research, not just what it told us. Yet, sharing more history, more correct history, more comprehensive history, shouldn't be controversial. It's literally what we're supposed to exist to do.
What current trends in the field are you most excited by?
CC: I'm excited to see more museum organizations moving toward salary transparency in hiring. Seeing NEMA move to requiring it on the jobs board was great, and I truly hope to see AAM follow suit soon. Because salary transparency is an important part of equity-driven practice, and it's part of a commitment to the people who bring museums to life. Our organizations would be nothing without the people who do this work, and salary transparency helps us know not only where our talents are valued but also that organizations are genuinely committed to cultivating a diverse and inclusive workforce – and lord knows we still have progress to make on that front.
Do you have a favorite museum book or blog which you would recommend to colleagues?
CC: Lonnie Bunch's "A Fool's Errand," about creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture, was great. And such an important read as we think about what it takes to do historically neglected or marginalized history right, to honor and uplift it in a way that is genuine and not superficial or perfunctory, whether we're doing it on a museum-size scale or, as the vast majority of us are, something smaller.
LD: One would be activecollections.org, particularly the manifesto, [www.activecollections.org/manifesto ] and its companion book Active Collections by Elizabeth Wood, Rainey Tisdale, and Trevor Jones. I met Rainey upwards of 20 years ago and am not surprised that she would eventually be called the “21st-century conscience of history museums” or as having an “intellect that is both beautiful and terrible to behold.” But while the work of Rainey and her Active Collections colleagues may seem theoretical or aspirational, it is being put into practice every day at HN and among some of our colleagues (e.g. Framingham and Natick). That is what excites me - the philosophy has been absorbed throughout HN (by our board, the Collections Committee, our staff, and volunteers) and we can see the concrete improvements it has and will make. We are burdened psychologically, financially, and spatially by an “unactive” collection, but it doesn’t always have to be this way. I chose a two-year terminal degree in Museum Studies (Masters from Cooperstown) with a focus on public history because I cannot stay in the academic or theoretical for too long until I need the concrete and pragmatic. This resource offers the bridge between both.
What is on your museum bucket list (things to do, places to visit)?
CC: I am *SO* excited for the International African American Museum opening in Charleston, SC next year. It's such an important project in a place of such significance to African American history, and I'm really anxious to see the incredible work of the folks who have committed years of effort and expertise to it come to fruition there.