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)

On this episode, we visit the Mount Auburn Cemetery in nearby Cambridge and Watertown, Massachusetts. Following a suggestion by Hannah Elder, Associate Reference Librarian for Rights and Reproductions at the MHS, we investigate one connection that we have to the Cemetery: a key to Robert C. Winthrop’s tomb.

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-4-Winthrop-Tomb

Email us at podcast@masshist.org.

Episode Special Guests:

Hannah Elder, Associate Reference Librarian for Rights and Reproductions, has been with the MHS since 2018. She holds a BA in Anthropology from the University of Maine and an MLIS from Simmons University. Her historical interests include the history of the book, queer history, and historic grief practices.

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:

Meadowland (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)

In this episode, we visit the Bulfinch Building at the Massachusetts General Hospital to examine one of the most, if not the most, significant discoveries in modern medicine. Sarah Alger, the Director of the Paul S. Russell, MD Museum of Medical History and Innovation, shows us the hospital's Ether Dome where the first public surgery using an anesthetic was performed. Back at the MHS, we sit down with Chief Historian Peter Drummey and Curator of Art and Artifacts Emerita Anne Bentley to learn more about the contentious history of this innovation.

Learn more about episode objects here: https://www.masshist.org/podcast/season-4-episode-3-painless-revolution

Email us at podcast@masshist.org.

Episode Special Guest:

Sarah Alger is the George and Nancy Putnam Director of Mass General Hospital’s Paul S. Russell, MD Museum of Medical History and Innovation. She was a founding editor of Proto, a thought leadership publication that was sponsored by MGH for 17 years.

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)

In this episode, we begin our exploration of the greater Boston area and institutions that are connected to the MHS through shared collections. We first visit the Old North Church located in the North End to speak with Nikki Stewart, Executive Director of Old North Illuminated, and Patrick Gabridge, the producing artistic director of Plays in Place. We learn more about the building, its significance to the American Revolution, and its relationship to the Society's collections.

Learn more about episode objects here: https://www.masshist.org/podcast/season-4-episode-2-old-north-church

For more information on the staged reading of Revolution's Edge, please visit oldnorth.com.

Email us at podcast@masshist.org.

Episode Special Guests:

Nikki Stewart currently serves as the Executive Director of Old North Illuminated. Since 2020, Nikki has led the organization through a transformation that includes a new mission and interpretive plan, extensive research into Old North’s Black and Indigenous communities, and the creation of new on-site and classroom programming.

Patrick Gabridge is the producing artistic director of Plays in Place, a site-specific theater company that creates new plays in partnership with museums, historic sites, and other cultural institutions. They've created engaging theatrical experiences at Old North Church, the Massachusetts State House, Mount Auburn Cemetery, and many other sites around New England.

This episode uses materials from:

Sanctuary by Podington Bear (Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported)
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)

Join us on January 6, 2025 for Historians & Their Histories, the new podcast from the Massachusetts Historical Society. In this new series, we are introducing you to the historians who write the histories. In each episode, we sit down with a scholar who has received fellowship support from the Massachusetts Historical Society. We learn about their origin stories and ask them about why they became students of the past. And we get a sneak peek at their current projects, too.

On this season of The Object of History, we are visiting institutions and organizations that have a connection to the MHS either through collections that we house or objects that we have loaned to them. But, first, we begin this season by discussing our very own headquarters in Boston. We sit down with various MHS staff members to learn more about the construction of the building, its maintenance, and their own experiences at 1154 Boylston Street.

Learn more about episode objects here: https://www.masshist.org/podcast/season-4-episode-1-1154

Email us at podcast@masshist.org.

Episode Special Guests:

Dan Sweeney is the Facility Manager at the MHS. He began working at the Society in 2010.

James P. Harrison III has been Custodian at the MHS since 1990.

This episode uses materials from:

Canoe by Podington Bear (Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 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)