On this episode of The Object of History, we visit an item from the MHS collection currently on loan to the Museum of African American History on Boston’s Beacon Hill. We examine the imposing stone that enabled the printing of William Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist publication, The Liberator. While visiting the Museum, we learn more about the building’s importance to African American history in Boston as well as the Museum’s current exhibits.

Learn more about episode objects here: https://www.masshist.org/podcast/season-4-episode-7-Imposing-Stone

Email us at podcast@masshist.org.

Episode Special Guests:

Angela T. Tate is Chief Curator and Director of Collections at the Museum of African American History, Boston and Nantucket (MAAH). She oversees collections, exhibitions, interpretation, and content, focused on the lives and descendants of the Black communities in Boston and Nantucket, as well as New England. Prior to joining MAAH, she was inaugural women’s history curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). She co-curated the permanent exhibit, Forces for Change: Mary McLeod Bethune and Black Women’s Activism, which highlights the strategies Black women have used to fight for justice and equality. Throughout her career, she has worked as curator and public historian in a variety of archives and museums in California and Illinois that focused on telling inclusive and expansive stories of the American past. She is a PhD candidate in History at Northwestern University and her dissertation discusses cultural diplomacy and Pan-Africanism through the 1950s-60s radio program hosted by Etta Moten Barnett in Chicago. This work has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the New York Public Library, and the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute. Her work has been published in Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture, the Smithsonian’s Afrofuturism catalog, Ubuntu Dialogues, and several upcoming publications. Find more information at www.atpublichistory.com

Cara Liasson currently serves as the Collections Manager and Registrar for the Museum of African American History, Boston and Nantucket. Her career in the museum field spans over fifteen years, where she has worked at institutions such as Lowell National Historical Park and Old Sturbridge Village. She holds a B.A. in History from Wheaton College in Massachusetts and a graduate certificate in Museum Collections Management and Care from George Washington University.

Selvin Backert is the Education Specialist at the Museum of African American History, Boston and Nantucket.

Sage Morgan-Hubbard is the Director of Learning & Engagement at the Museum of African American History, Boston and Nantucket.

This episode uses materials from:

Osprey by Chad Crouch (Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International)
Psychic by Dominic Giam of Ketsa Music (licensed under a commercial non-exclusive license by the Massachusetts Historical Society through Ketsa.uk)
Curious Nature by Dominic Giam of Ketsa Music (licensed under a commercial non-exclusive license by the Massachusetts Historical Society through Ketsa.uk)

On this episode, we visit the Massachusetts Audubon Society (Mass Audubon). While there, we examine some objects related to the early history of the Society from Membership Specialist, Emily Gray. MHS Chief Historian Peter Drummey and Bancroft Poor, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer at Mass Audubon, tell us about the Society’s formation as an advocacy group at the turn of the twentieth century and how its goals have changed over time.

Learn more about episode objects here: https://www.masshist.org/podcast/season-4-episode-6-Mass-Audubon

Email us at podcast@masshist.org.

Episode Special Guests:

Bancroft Poor serves as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer for Mass Audubon. In these roles, he is in charge of information technology, human resources, capital assets and planning, and financial functions, including budget preparation and monitoring, annual audit and tax preparation, insurance, contracting, investment liaison, and banking. He is a member of the senior management team and one of the primary staff contacts with the Board of Directors, serving as staff liaison to the Board Administration/Finance, Audit, and Investment Committees. In addition, he manages Mass Audubon’s Belize program and works extensively on Mass Audubon’s internal climate change and energy conservation initiatives. Bancroft Poor has been an employee of Mass Audubon since 1984. He is a graduate of Harvard College and holds a master’s degree in Public and Private Management from the Yale School of Management.

Emily Gray is a Membership Specialist with Mass Audubon.

This episode uses materials from:

The Bond (Instrumental) by Chad Crouch (Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International)
Psychic by Dominic Giam of Ketsa Music (licensed under a commercial non-exclusive license by the Massachusetts Historical Society through Ketsa.uk)
Curious Nature by Dominic Giam of Ketsa Music (licensed under a commercial non-exclusive license by the Massachusetts Historical Society through Ketsa.uk)

On this episode, we continue our visit to Mount Auburn Cemetery. Joined by biographer Natalie Dykstra, we visit the Gardner tomb where Isabella Stewart Gardner is buried. We learn more about Gardner and her family's relationship to the history of Boston from Dykstra and Chief Historian Peter Drummey.

Mount Auburn is the first American cemetery that purposely combined commemoration with elements of experimental gardening, picturesque landscape design, and access to nature, starting a trend across the nation in the mid-19th century that led to the creation of the first public parks in this country.

Learn more about episode objects here: https://www.masshist.org/podcast/season-4-episode-5-Gardner-Tomb

Email us at podcast@masshist.org.

Episode Special Guests:

Natalie Dykstra is the author of Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life, which was a finalist for the 2013 Massachusetts Book Award. For her recent book Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner, she received a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholars grant and the inaugural Robert and Ina Caro Research Fellowship from the Biographers International Organization. Chasing Beauty is a finalist for the Marfield Prize, the national award for arts writing. Dykstra has been an elected Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society since 2011 and is an emerita professor of English at Hope College. She lives near Boston.

Meg L. Winslow is Senior Curator of Historical Collections & Archives at Mount Auburn Cemetery where she is responsible for developing and overseeing the Cemetery’s permanent collections of historical and aesthetic importance. Meg is co-author with Melissa Banta of The Art of Commemoration and America’s First Rural Cemetery, Mount Auburn’s Significant Monument Collection, in its third printing.

This episode uses materials from:

Elderberry (Instrumental) by Chad Crouch (Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International)
Psychic by Dominic Giam of Ketsa Music (licensed under a commercial non-exclusive license by the Massachusetts Historical Society through Ketsa.uk)
Curious Nature by Dominic Giam of Ketsa Music (licensed under a commercial non-exclusive license by the Massachusetts Historical Society through Ketsa.uk)