The First Annual J. Carter Brown Memorial Lecture
October 23, 2007
MacMillan Hall, Room 117
Brown University
5:30 p.m.
Richard Meier, Richard Meier & Partners Architects LLP
Architect Richard Meier discussed his work, focusing on his projects for museums and other art spaces from the 1970s to such recent landmark projects as the Ara Pacis Museum in Rome and the Arp Museum in Germany.
Cultural? Heritage? Tourism? Lectures
November 12, 2007
John Nicholas Brown Center, Library
357 Benefit Street
5:30 p.m.
Timothy Webmoor, Stanford University
November 26, 2007
John Nicholas Brown Center, Library
357 Benefit Street
5:30 p.m.
Yannis Hamilakis, University of Southampton
February 13, 2008
John Nicholas Brown Center, Library
357 Benefit Street
5:30 p.m.
Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindarar, assistant professor of History at Brown University
February 26, 2008
John Nicholas Brown Center, Library
357 Benefit Street
5:30 p.m.
Amy Webb, director of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Heritage Tourism Program
May 5, 2008
John Nicholas Brown Center, Library
357 Benefit Street
5:30 p.m.
Oscar Ho, director of the program in cultural management at the Chinese University of Hong Kong
Sharing Stories: Interpreting African American History for New England and the Nation
In 2003, the U.S. Congress passed legislation authorizing the creation of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). The museum, which is scheduled to open its doors in 2015, represents an unparalleled opportunity to explore the rich legacy of African American experiences for millions of visitors from across the country and around the world. Yet developing the museum and its programming also presents a variety of challenges. How are African American history and culture to be portrayed? How will NMAAHC relate to other institutions – museums, historic sites, state and local historical societies – with a shared mission of exploring the African American experience? How can New England museums contribute to the national story? And how can the NMAAHC help make local institutions better and stronger?
Sharing Stories: Interpreting African American History for New England and the Nation, was a workshop dedicated to exploring these and similar questions. The gathering, which was jointly sponsored by the John Nicholas Brown Center at Brown University and the National Museum of African American History and Culture, brought together the director and senior staff of NMAAHC along with representatives of a wide range of public history and cultural institutions in New England, as well as interested scholars, teachers, and students, for two days of conversations about shared concerns. The workshop began with a keynote address by Lonnie G. Bunch III, founding director of the NMAAHC (see below). Workshop sessions on Friday and Saturday focused on innovative educational programs and freedom tours, interpreting slavery and freedom in historic homes, new directions for art museums and cultural tourism, and other topics. The workshop also featured a presentation about the programs of Amistad America and a walking tour given by the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society.
November 29, 2007
MacMillan Hall, Room 117
Brown University
7:30 p.m.
Lonnie G. Bunch III, founding director of the NMAAHC
Historian, author, curator, and educator, Bunch is at the helm of the Smithsonian’s 19th and newest museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture. In this position he is working to set the museum's mission, coordinate its fundraising and membership campaigns, develop its collections and establish partnerships. As a public historian, Bunch has spent nearly 30 years in the museum field and has published widely on topics ranging from the African American military experience and all-black towns in the American west to diversity in museum management.
Public Humanities Professional Workshops
December 7, 2007
John Nicholas Brown Center
357 Benefit Street
10 a.m. – 3 p.m.
Barbara Silberman, independent consultant for historic house museums
This workshop presented national trends, the newest thinking, and new solutions to the problems plaguing historic house museums today. It considered three short case studies focusing on mission and money, developing relationships, and new paradigms for preservation of these historically significant properties.
Barbara Silberman, senior program advisor for the Heritage Philadelphia Program and principal, Heritage Partners Consulting, was the workshop facilitator. Silberman founded the Philadelphia Program, with support from the Pew Charitable Trusts, and served as its program officer for ten years. During that time she worked with hundreds of history museums, historic sites and historical organizations to develop innovative programs and preservation activities and to secure grant funding for them. Recently she completed the Living Legacy project, providing technical assistance to seven historic house museums as they transitioned to new uses. She has directed historic house museums and historical societies throughout her career.
February 12, 2008
John Nicholas Brown Center
357 Benefit Street
10 a.m. – 3 p.m.
Joanne Riley and Heather Cole, Mass. Memories Roadshow
This workshop guided participants in an exploration of what makes a successful public history project, using the Mass. Memories Road Show as a model. The day specifically focused on the rewards and challenges of creating a community-based public history project and the logistics of managing a state-wide project on a very limited budget. Participants were encouraged to share their own experiences in the field. To learn more about the Mass. Memories Road Show, please visit their Web site.
The Mass. Memories Road Show is a state-wide program that documents Massachusetts history through photographs and the stories behind the photographs. We collect and digitize these primary sources during lively and carefully orchestrated public events that involve local residents in the creation of historical knowledge about their communities. The project is statewide in scope, blends organizational and grassroots support, attracts an ever-expanding community of volunteers, fosters lasting connections among practitioners, offers a stable, interactive online repository, provides solid historical grounding, is highly structured and yet tailored to each community. Since its launch, the project has gathered nearly 1,000 photographs and stories from 11 communities, and in July 2007 completed the first stage of its ambitious campaign to visit all of the 351 communities in Massachusetts.
February 26, 2008
John Nicholas Brown Center
357 Benefit Street
10 a.m. – 3 p.m.
Amy Webb, director, National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Heritage Tourism Program
Making sites and communities come alive for visitors was the focus of this one-day workshop. This workshop included instruction on how to tell the story of your site or community effectively using creative examples from across the U.S. Participants learned how to attract and engage visitors and how to choose appropriate interpretive tools such as brochures, driving tours, walking tours, museums, exhibits, audio tours, and tour guides that meet both your needs and your budget. Participants were encouraged to share their own interpretive challenges or successes as part of the workshop.
The Heritage Tourism Program began in 1989 when the National Endowment for the Arts provided a challenge grant to implement the nation’s first heritage tourism demonstration program. The cornerstone of the initiative—and all subsequent work by the Heritage Tourism Program—is facilitating the collaboration among local stakeholders that is necessary for successful and sustainable heritage tourism programs. Through the program, the National Trust for Historic Preservation created a heritage tourism development model using five guiding principles and four basic steps for successful and sustainable heritage tourism programs. These principles have been used by the National Trust and other organizations to develop heritage tourism programs across the country as well as in several locations abroad. For more information visit the Heritage Tourism Program’s Web site for cultural heritage tourism practioners managed by the National Trust’s Heritage Tourism Program.
March 7, 2008
John Nicholas Brown Center
357 Benefit Street
10 a.m. – 3 p.m.
Gayle Gifford, columnist, consultant, strategist, provocateur, and president of Cause & Effect Inc.
Organization development guru Peter Block suggests that if we have to ask "How?" then we are asking the wrong question. Rather, we should ask ourselves "What matters?" Gayle Gifford led this interactive and engaging workshop that worked to build practical skills while exploring the critical questions that every nonprofit leader of today should be asking, including: What is transformational change, and do we have the courage to seek it? How can we enlist the power beyond our walls? How can we budget for progress and change? How can we unleash people power, abandoning patriarchy while still ensuring results? What if governance were re-imagined as a guiding force? Can we live without strategic planning? What is the substitute?
To Gayle Gifford, nonprofits are a promise to their communities to create a better life full of hope, beauty, promise, and social justice. Every nonprofit has the obligation to deliver on that promise. Gayle brings over 25 years of experience to her work - from her personal activism for peace, disarmament, environmental, human, and civil rights, to her professional work as a consultant, director of development, and senior nonprofit manager. She is one of just 80 individuals in the U.S. who have earned the advanced fundraising credential, ACFRE. Gayle is also the author of two books, How are We Doing and Meaningful Participation, and co-author of the monograph, “Bringing a Development Director on Board.” Gayle holds an M.S. in organization and management from Antioch University New England and teaches graduate courses at Brown University and Simmons College. Her clients have included the House of the Seven Gables, the Trust for Public Land New England, WaterFire Providence, Latino Dollars for Scholars, and the Rhode Island Foundation. She currently serves as the board chair for the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities.
May 6, 2008
John Nicholas Brown Center
357 Benefit Street
10 a.m. – 3 p.m.
Oscar Ho, director of the M.A. program in cultural management at the Chinese University of Hong Kong
Curatorial work can be a creative, critical process, questioning the nature of exhibition presentation, the roles of museum, the infrastructure of power, and other issues relating to the practices of cultural interpretation. Instead of trying to present artists’ work within a historical or aesthetic framework objectively (if that is possible at all), it takes on specific objectives dealing with cultural and political issues affecting the arts and the community. In regions such as Asia, where cultural workers find it necessary to deal with problems such as political domination and social injustice, cultural mediators such as curators feel obligated to deal with much larger issues through their work. This workshop reviewed the traditional format of curatorial practice, engaged participants in a critical rethinking of topics – such as the format of exhibition presentation, the power structure of aesthetic judgments, and museums and the creation of identity – and used examples of exhibitions to demonstrate some possible approaches in critical curatorship within the social and political context of Asia. The workshop also looked into the operational and ethical issues relating to critical curatorship, and some of the problems and contradictions it faces.
Oscar Ho was formerly exhibition director of the Hong Kong Arts Centre and founding director of Museum of Contemporary Art in Shanghai. He is currently director of the M.A. program in cultural management at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is a member of the international committee for the upcoming documenta13, and is responsible for selecting its new artistic director.
Workshops are open to staff and volunteers at New England cultural organizations. The fee for workshops is $15 and includes lunch.
Eating Chinese: Global and Local Perspectives on Food and Memory
April 4, 2008
John Nicholas Brown Center
357 Benefit Street
1:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
How do we identify? What does “authentic” mean? Canadian-Chinese, Latino-Chino: Are there distinguishing differences? Common roots? Socio-historical constructions? Film screenings ("Cuba” from “On the Islands” and “Canada” from “Three Continents”) followed by a conversation with filmmaker Cheuk Kwan, Ernesto Martinez, and John Eng-Wong. Moderated by Evelyn Hu-Dehart.
April 4, 2008
John Nicholas Brown Center
357 Benefit Street
4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Restaurants provide a “where” of memories, a site of remembrance. They are allusive also, able to call up associations of place, fragrance, sight, and taste. A five-sided discussion with an historian, a restaurateur, a cookbook author, and cultural critics, all of them eaters. Panel discussion with Mark Swislocki, John Chan, Ellen Leong Blonder, discussants Robert Lee and Lingzhen Wang.
April 4, 2008
John Nicholas Brown Center
357 Benefit Street
6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Southeastern New England’s unique contribution to Chinese American food commemorated and served at this opening reception.
Other events for this series were held on Saturday, April 5, at Johnson & Wales University. To view a complete schedule of events, download the program for Eating Chinese: Global and Local Perspectives on Food and Memory.
Archaeologies of Memory in the Global South: Uncovering and Displaying the Remembered and Unremembered Past
June 9 – June 11, 2008
John Nicholas Brown Center
357 Benefit Street
This seminar explored the archaeologies of memory in the global south. We considered the ways in which ancient times, aboriginal cultures, colonial society, and post-colonial conflicts have been remembered and forgotten, ignored or displayed, heralded or discarded. This seminar considered both the theory of cultural heritage and its practice, looking to understand the complexities of the past’s shaping of our times, and the way that our times shape our understanding of the past. The wide range of topics allowed us reflect on the challenges, practical, political, and social and economic benefits, and personal pleasures of examining and presenting the past.
Pritzker-award-winning
architect and principal of
Richard Meier & Partners
Architects LLP gave the inaugural J. Carter Brown Memorial Lecture in fall 2007.
Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindarar, assistant professor of History at Brown University, delivered a lecture titled Picnicking with the Buddahas in Colonial India on February 26.
Founding director of the National Museum for African American History and Culture, Lonnie G. Bunch III, delivered the keynote address for the Sharing Stories conference.
Joanne Riley and Heather Cole were the presenters for the Mass Memories Roadshow workshop.
Presenters from Africa, Hong Kong, Latin America, and the Carribean participated in this seminar for the rising generation of scholars, curators, and activists.