Category: Museums

Everything Old is New Again

On By kittycalashIn Art Rant, Living History, Museums

I could be making bonnets. I could be applying for moar jobz. I could be finishing the soup that’s on the stove. But instead, I’m annoyed by a museum’s social media posting. For the sake of all that’s holy in history, is there nothing more to an 18th century soldier’s life than his weapon? Now, to the museum’s credit, only 50% of the posted images could truly be said to focus on the musket or some musket-related tool.

But what’s so damned annoying is that the organization in question, all brand-spanking new and on everybody’s “must-see” list, falls back on the same old tropes on social media, which makes me want to know more about their educational mission. If the social media message continues to reinforce the same messages (guns are important) instead of expanding to include a soldier’s daily life, or even his inner life, the public has trouble moving past that simple message to ask more questions.

Museums and their representatives cue the questions visitors ask by framing objects, writing labels, even aiming the lights, to focus on what the museum believes is important. Put guns front and center, that’s what the questions will be about instead of about hygiene, clothing, literacy, or diet.

This image got me really excited, until I read the caption.

“Brick dust for polishing the brass elements on his weapon.” Dammit! It’s not tooth powder!

I understand full well that the museum’s interpretation of our national founding is far more inclusive than many museum visitors have previously encountered. I understand that the educational program currently lacks a permanent director, and is not yet fully fleshed out.

Museums are among the most trusted sources for information. Presentation matters. What museums emphasize matters. If museums — in their exhibits, programs, or marketing– continue to “give the people what they want,” the people will not know that they can want something different, or even that there is something different to want. Inclusivity is constant: in the galleries, in the labels, in the programming, in the staff, and in the marketing (which this museum did, in fact, do, masterfully, at a major train station).

But I’m picking on them for this post because they are the top of the game right now, and if they can do better in the galleries and in the train station, they can do better on social media. They’ve had some of the best female interpreters around working this month and the end of last, and yet the first social media post on that program is of a soldier, and focuses on his weapon. The past– and the present– deserve better.

Becoming an Exhibit Prop

On By kittycalashIn Museums5 Comments

We all have those Hamlet-like moments, don’t we?
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable | Seem to me all the uses of this world!

But in this case, I can attest to being and not merely feeling flat: lo, I am cutout exhibition furniture.

Thanks to Mr B’s casting call on behalf of the New-York Historical Society, a number of friends and acquaintances and I are now part of the scenery of the new exhibition, Saving Washington, up through July 30.

The behind the scenes of being a prop is pretty entertaining.

Mr H
Steaming my shawl

The changeable green-red sari gown was made for this photo shoot; we were asked to wear strong colors, and since the exhibit was meant to represent one of Dolley Madison’s “squeezes,” dressing up was in order– and hard for me to do, since most of my gowns are day dresses at best.

I started this November 22, and carried it on airplanes several times.

November 22: the madness begins
Sleeve salvation

The sleeves appeared to be a complete failure at first, until I figured out I could pleat the design to form a smaller, graphic band at the bottom. Sometimes I start without knowing how a thing will turn out…including most days when I get out of bed.

December 9 completion level: wearable.

At least it was finished enough to wear to the photoshoot, and it appeared again, with a real hem and a ribbon to keep it on, in Salem last month. I’m pleased enough with the color, and how well it doesn’t go with most things to call this a success– and finished!

In situ.

Serving Delaplace

On By kittycalashIn Events, History, Living History, material culture, Museums, Reenacting2 Comments

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With 400 miles between us, Drunk Tailor and I have few chances to explore the past together, so I was both delighted and nervous when he agreed to join the British Garrison 1775 event at Fort Ticonderoga as one of Captain Delaplace’s servants.  Even better, we were also joined by the itinerant Deep North Yankee who wandered around the Fort (possibly seeking roofing shingles, of which he is much in need).

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Friday nights are always magical, candle and firelight (and only the warmth of the fire) as we drink cider and talk about history. But morning always comes: Saturday, cold and clear, Mr S and I woke and blinked across the room at each other, and I wondered to what degree I really wanted to ever crawl out of bed…only hunger and an eventual need to pee (and fear of a Sergeant) propelled me.

Yup, you cook 'em on a board.
Yup, you cook ’em on a board.

First order of business: breakfast. Mr S, supplied with his corn meal of choice, made us johnnycakes, which provided perhaps more interpretive than nutritive value. Still, they were warm and tasty and he is the only person I know who can make them; my efforts end up as FEMA disaster sites.

Captain Delaplace’s servants were tasked with cooking for his mess, so Mr S and I got a start. We had a chicken, an onion (I traded onion # 2 for some bacon), butter, carrots, potatoes, a butternut squash, salt, and some port. I don’t know where this English serving woman of 1775 encountered mis en place, but she accidentally introduced coq au vin to the Captain’s table with the dinner meal.

Captain and Mrs Delaplace dining, manservant in attendance
Captain and Mrs Delaplace dining, manservant in attendance

The Captain and his Lady dined on chicken braised in butter and bacon with root vegetables in a port sauce; we servants waited until they were done before we could eat. (Confession: I need to eat a lot, and have a sensory overload problem, so when visitors fully crowded the room, I had to dash across the parade ground for a Clif Bar and an Ativan before I could continue to wait for my dinner.) In the afternoon, dishes were washed at the table, as was common (at least in early New England), dried, and set away, while the Captain’s lady and child played in the cabbage patch between the beds.

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When the room was empty, servants were able to eat (huzzay!) and found the meal very tasty indeed. I would certainly make this again, and learned more about cooking– a typically female task I generally try to avoid– than I had expected to. Then we had yet another round of dishes before it was time to tidy the room and make ready for tea or supper.

To that end, we cleared the table and broke it apart to reveal the floor and hearth, which needed to be swept of bread crumbs, squash peels, dead leaves, and other detritus. The best way to sweep an unfinished floor in the 18th century (per Hannah Glasse et al) is to strew the floor with wet sand and then sweep. I mixed sand with lavender-infused vinegar and threw it on the floor; this keeps the dust down as you sweep months of dust and dirt out of the corners and from behind tables and chests.

The trick is to sweep in one direction (more or less) from the back of the room to the front, and then to gather up the sand (here in a shovel) and pitch it off the landing. Much was thrown out the door and over the stair rail, just as servants would have done in 1775. (And I am told it is soothing to nearly hit the sergeant, but perhaps that’s merely hearsay, if not heresy.)

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When we were done, we restored the table (Drunk Tailor noticed the height of the ceiling, and wondered about hanging birds in cages whist awaiting the return of the tabletop), fully reset with cloth, candlesticks, plates, and knives, ready for the supper we didn’t cook, as we skipped away at the close of the day to find our own meal in Glens Falls, where live music is inescapable on a Saturday night.

Sleeping on the Job

On By kittycalashIn History, Living History, Museums

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Last night, as I lay in the tester bed we slept in on What Cheer Eve, I wondered again what it was like to live and work in the house over the course of its life, and how the servants had been treated. In the late 18th and early 19th century, the notion of “service” was still evolving in New England. Help was common, and while northern and urban slavery existed, and we know the Browns traded in and owned enslaved people, we have no evidence of them in the house.

We know there was a white woman between 45 and 60, and four “all other free people,” we have names –Mary, Jonathan, and Gideon– for some of the people associated with the family, but don’t know their details. How did the Browns treat them? What was the relationship like? Were they invisible? Thanked? Chastised?

Goody Morris makes up a bed. Photograph by J. D. Kay
Goody Morris makes up a bed. Photograph by J. D. Kay

Diary entries that record “my babe takes tea with Ma’s Mary” suggests that there was some level of familiarity, and hints at the friendly relationship children and servants sometimes had in these houses, when both were seen as less civilized, less refined, and (clearly) less educated than the adult homeowners. Physically, service stairs kept chamber pots, laundry, food, servants, and children out of view, sequestered into smaller, dimmer, less-finished spaces.

Petulant Alice faces her first hurdle, Kitty and Goody Morris. Photograph by J. D. Kay
Petulant Alice faces her first hurdle, Kitty and Goody Morris. Photograph by J. D. Kay

We’ll never really know how the Browns really treated their servants, or felt about them; these are people who matter only enough to be remarked upon in passing. Perhaps even more frustrating is that we’ll never know what the servants thought of the Browns, of their businesses and moods, loves and appetites. These barely-documented people could tell us so much, if only the past could talk.