Slave Codes on Quilts?

With Black History Month around the corner, it’s a good time to send out a warning about a colorful, comforting, and yet pernicious myth concerning the Underground Railroad. The story goes that households involved in the Underground Railroad hung quilts outside with geometric patterns designed to communicate information to escaping slaves. Despite an absence of primary-source evidence to support this myth (no references in escaped slave narratives, for instance), several North Carolina cultural heritage institutions have embraced and perpetuated the story. Click here for one online example.

Quilt historian Leigh Fellner has thoroughly researched and debunked the myth of the quilt slave code. She has traced the tale to one family in South Carolina selling quilts to tourists in the 1990s and a less-than-careful writer who published a book on it thereafter. Several academic historians support Fellner’s myth-busting account. See, for instance, this discussion thread on the history network. The New York Times has also worked to get the word out, and Scholastic has a website dedicated to educate classroom teachers about the many myths surrounding the Underground Railroad.

If a story engages audiences about the past, does it matter that it’s not exactly accurate? Public historians grapple with this topic regularly and often have to steer tour guides away from the good stories they develop by responding to audience reactions over time. Ghost tours are a typical example of this process.

North Carolina has several authentic Underground Railroad stories to take pride in, as well as a fascinating heritage of quilts and other textiles. The resources of our state’s historic sites and museums can help educators share these lessons. Harriet Jacobs’ brave endurance, hiding out in Edenton for seven years before her escape, and the false-bottom wagon Quakers used to help transport escaped slaves, now at Mendenhall Plantation, are two prominent Underground Railroad successes.

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The North Carolina Museum of History’s collection includes two quilts made by women who were previously enslaved. Mary Barnes, of Wilson, NC created the “Martha’s Choice” patterned quilt sometime between the years 1875 to before her death in 1902. Her family used the piece and passed it down until donating it to NCMOH in 1978. Another quilt with a log cabin pattern dates to 1907. The maker, Patience White, gave the piece to the donor’s mother as a token of appreciation for teaching her to read.

True stories are often more wonderful than fiction. We just have to spend more time teasing them out of verifiable evidence. North Carolina has a great deal of cultural heritage material to mine for Black History Month lessons and programs. Let’s honor those who lived through past trials and tribulations by keeping it real.

Explore Arts Council Funding Possibilities

Does your historical organization produce programming that relies on writers, artists, storytellers, or craftspeople? Do you regularly engage the community with these activities? If so, you may want to reach out to your local arts council for partnerships or additional support and/or consider applying to the NC Arts Council for a direct grant.

The 13^th annual African American Cultural Celebration is a great example of a history museum/ arts council partnership and will take place at the North Carolina Museum of History on Saturday, January 25, 2014. NCMOH works with state, local, and national arts councils to make the event possible.

Even though many historical organizations cross-pollinate with the literary, performing, fine, and folk arts, we do not always take full advantage of the possibilities. The fall 2013 meeting of the Federation of North Carolina Historical Societies featured a workshop on fundraising and Vicki Vitiello, a Senior Program Director for the NC Arts Council, discussed the direct grants program. Funny how the missions of art and history organizations overlap significantly but those 2 branches of “cultural resources” are not always mutually aware. History organizations need to know about arts council funding possibilities for their community programs.

There are two ways the NC Arts Council can support your institution’s art-related programming—direct grants to organizations and grassroots funding via local arts councils. Direct grants are available for eligible nonprofits. The applying organization must:

• have provided arts programming to their communities for at least 2 consecutive years
• have prior-year organizational cash operating expenses of at least $20,000.

Grant applications are now available electronically. Even if your institution’s primary mission is historical, this program is something to consider. For most organizational grant categories, funded expenses can range from $5,000 to $15,000. The deadline for 2014-15 organizational grants is March 3^rd.

In contrast to direct grants to organizations, grassroots funding is the result of a county-by-county decision-making process in which each local arts council selects community projects. If your organization is not eligible to apply for a direct grant, consider partnering with your local arts council to initiate projects through the Grassroots Arts Program.

Three members of the Federation of NC Historical Societies, who were also fall workshop participants, discussed their institutions’ arts-related programs. Each offers a different type of program with the support of its local arts council.

• The New Hope Valley Railway, a volunteer-run train museum in Apex, has partnered with the Apex Arts Council to sponsor a writer-in-residence program. Click here to read the poem, “Clackety Clack,” one of the recent products of that partnership.
• This past June, the Catawba County Historical Association hosted a Bluegrass music festival, sponsored by their local arts council, at the historic Murray’s Mill site.
• The Wayne County Historical Museum joins with the  Wayne County Arts Council and 4 local libraries to present “Wayne County Reads.” In 2013 “La Laguna” was the book selection and the museum hosted a speaker from Mexico, a panel of former residents from Mexico telling about their pre-immigration lives, and a fair for all local Spanish-speaking residents.  Community members displayed various crafts, demonstrated dances, etc. Three years ago the book, “Three cups of Tea,” inspired several museum programs including an exhibition, a panel of soldiers from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base discussing their experiences in Afganistan, and a presentation about Islam by a Duke professor.  The museum also co-sponsored a fair for children that included photographs, costumes, and toys reflecting Afghan culture.

Most history museums and sites provide programming that involves reading, writing, music, or folklife. Wouldn’t NC Arts Council funding help make these initiatives bigger or better at your institution?

C2C’s Crowdsourcing Experiment

Three weeks ago we posted a discussion here about Artifact Controversies. While we hoped to inspire engaging, low-cost participatory exhibits with historical objects, the post generated another idea from one of our blog followers. Why not set up a website with special objects from around the state that would be open for contributions? We love the idea (thanks, Mary Ellen!), but our team’s meager technological capacity limits its implementation. Our blog, however, enables us to add pages that can achieve the same ends.

Our staff decided to seed the newly created pages with our own selections and then put out a call for contributions on our listserv, which has a reach of 641. The “parent” page initially contained objects that Project Director, LeRae Umfleet, had culled several years ago from the NCDCR online collection database. Photographs of objects taken during the NC ECHO survey and their provenances established the auxiliary regional pages–Coastal Plain, Piedmont, and Mountains.

After two weeks the response (so far) to this crowdsourcing experiment has been underwhelming. We’ve had feedback and ideas from only two colleagues, both from within our NCDCR nexus here in Raleigh. The two contributions, however, were important and reshaped the parent page. Cheryl McLean, Head of the Information Services Branch at the Government & Heritage Library, augmented our original selections by contributing an entry titled “James Madison’s Gift.”

The initial concept was “Hidden Treasures of North Carolina,” and we proposed to present fascinating objects that had not been exhibited. But the title and idea behind it warranted revision. As John Campbell, Director of Collections at the North Carolina Museum of History, noted, the title perpetuates a negative stereotype of museums as troves of unaccessible artifacts. Moreover, Campbell pointed out that two of Umfleet’s ideas (then posted on the parent page) have been placed on permanent exhibition in the past year at NCMOH. So, we changed the parent title to “North Carolina Treasures” and replaced one of the entries with an artifact idea that Campbell contributed.

We’d love more object images and brief stories to add to our pages—both selections from the vast NCDCR collection, as well as compelling artifacts from across the state. What is your favorite North Carolina object? We’d like entries to come from publically accessible collections, but contributors do not have to be affiliated with a particular institution.

Our attempt at crowdsourcing online content leaves several additional questions:

• Why haven’t you contributed yet?
• Isn’t selecting objects based on your own notions of significance a fun and rare opportunity?
• Is there any inherent reward in seeing your own selection included?
• Or do we need more incentives for participation, like a raffle for preservation supplies?
• Would having a tag line, such as “contributed by _____” be worthwhile recognition for your submission effort?
• Or would it be best to leave the submissions anonymous?

Please send us your object ideas and opinions, either via the comment function below or by emailing adrienne.berney@ncdcr.gov, and continue the conversation!

Artifact Controversies

Looking for a new way to engage your museum’s participants with its collections? An exhibit called “Controversy” at the Ohio History Center is a model that most history museums could R&D—rip-off and duplicate. Curators displayed objects with little physical or interpretative background. Rather than use a didactic approach to presenting the objects, the exhibit encouraged visitors to the museum to imagine each artifact’s significance, to raise questions, and to share ideas with other participants. Visitors loved the experimental, exploratory tenor of the project. In fact, the show was so successful in its first incarnation, that OHC staff (who recently presented about this exhibit at the AASLH conference) created a sequel, “Controversy 2.”

Most curators and collections managers know of intriguing artifacts that raise more questions than the limited documentation accompanying them can answer. Rather than keeping them locked away in storage because they do not fit neatly into the stories that our institutions have told or want to tell, they can be displayed as conversation starters.

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This military helmet (c. 1812-1860), currently on exhibition at the North Carolina Museum of History, offers little interpretive information but suggests many questions. Visitors may ask themselves: What type of hair is it? Why was hair included? Does the form refer to Native American scalping practices in any way or does it follow ancient European traditions? If the exhibition allowed space for feedback methods, then one participant’s questions could provide food for thought for others. Participants could then even generate and share possible answers.

Some especially provocative and emotionally challenging artifacts can also be the most influential and engaging. The strong reactions that some objects elicit can be used as teaching moments. On the Indiana University campus, for instance, in 2002 representatives from the Black Student Union asked the University president to remove one of painter Thomas Hart Benton’s Depression-Era panels from public display. In an assemblage of historical scenes, the painter had included a Klansman with a burning cross to juxtapose Indiana’s past KKK prominence with its recent progress. Some 21st-century students were so upset by the image that they couldn’t concentrate in classes where the panel was on display. Rather than capitulate to demands to move the panel, the university president initiated an interpretive series on the panels for interested students. To read more about that controversy, visit http://www.indiana.edu/~benton/

Could you consider assembling a “Controversy” exhibit at your institution? Which objects would you include?

Holiday Ornaments

There is still time to create and/ or consign holiday ornaments as special souvenirs that your site can offer to visitors, while generating revenue. As we’ve discussed here previously, customizing affordable products from your collection can be a form of public access. Consider working with local artisans or larger manufacturers to design unique objects. Regional arts councils and festivals are good sources for finding craftsmen nearby.One ornament maker in Pinnacle, NC uses okra pods, shells, cotton bolls, starfish, gourds, and sweetgum balls to create santas, angels, lighthouses, and animals. The emphasis on local materials could help promote the distinctiveness of your site. Check with such artisans to find out whether consigning their wares in your giftshop is an option. This arrangement allows your institution to sell unique, locally made items with no financial risk.

Several of North Carolina’s cultural heritage institutions sell a range of brass ornament designs successfully. Both the North Carolina Museum of History and the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History offer ornaments with state and regional symbols and building motifs. Similarly, the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum’s gift shop sells a very affordable ornament showcasing five lighthouses.

A Brevard, NC company called the Charleston Mint is one producer of customized brass ornaments. They welcome small quantities and promise a brief processing period.  If you start now, you can offer a unique gift for your institution’s supporters and potentially earn revenue in the process. Once a design has been approved, it will take only 4-5 weeks before your organization receives the ornaments. Pricing varies depending on quantity, packaging, colors, and dimensionality and can be anywhere from $6.00-$10.00 per piece. An order of approximately two hundred, then, will require a cash investment. However, if your institution’s board and other volunteers like the idea and can commit to purchasing a certain number of ornaments before ordering, then you can proceed with little financial risk to your institution.

The Mint Museum’s gift shop has successfully customized products based on museum artifacts in its “Collection Connection” series. Staff derived three brass ornament designs from an oil portrait, a frame, and a statue in the museum’s collection. In addition to the potential revenue such customized products can raise, your institution would be offering an additional form of access to its collections. As the Mint Museum’s website announces, buyers feel like they can “take home a piece” of the museum. At the same, time your organization would be promoting its mission by emphasizing the distinctiveness of  its collection, building, and/or locality.

The Ask

How do you accomplish fundraising? The American Association of Museums recently hosted a webinar providing development advice, which we’ve condensed into ten important steps on the staircase to institutional success.

Fundraising from private sources helped create the new Nature Research Center, part of the NC Museum of Natural Sciences.

1. Use research to target potential donors. Use your own networks and those of others committed to your organization to “prospect.”

2. Start with those who already have some involvement in and passion for your institution’s mission. Board members should not only give, but they also should be willing to identify and/ or motivate other potential donors. When staff at Wake Forest University’s Museum of Anthropology embarked upon a fundraising letter campaign, they created a mailing list by identifying past financial and artifact donors and added Board members’ recommendations.

3. Offer benefits for donations, even if it’s only recognition. Publicize deadlines for the receiving of benefits.

4. Make a specific case for support. Let potential donors know what the institution will do with the money. Tell them about, and even involve them in, discreet projects as much as possible.

5. Before trying “The Ask” in person, make sure you have invited potential donors to a previous event, have visited them, or have gotten to know them in some other way. The Ask should not be your first contact; it should be an early step in the process of building a relationship.

6. Bring along a trustee or other person involved in your organization who also supports it financially. You and your companion should have made your own donations to your cause before asking someone else to do so. Since museum professionals usually do not have the expendable income that potential donors often do, figure out how many weeks’ pay or what percentage of your income you have given. Proportions should be more impressive and persuasive than dollar amounts. One of the webinar presenters, who is an experienced fundraiser and director of a county historical museum, asserted that it is common for potential donors to ask him how much he has given. Be prepared. If you are not committed to the cause enough to give a week’s pay, then the case you make will not seem as urgent or genuine.

7. Thank donors and update them on the way the funds they have given are used. Consider sending out the press releases you write, not only with the media, but also with your top donors and leaders in your community.

8. Focus on maintaining relationships with ten of your top donors. Keep in touch with them throughout the year by inviting them to events or just checking in with them.

9. Value the feedback you get in the process of fundraising. If potential donors are unwilling to give, ask why. Use each conversation as an opportunity to collect constructive criticism about your institution to help it become more responsive to community needs. Potential donors are not the only gauge of community engagement, but they are an important one.

Constructive criticism can also lead to financial support, as in the case of Confederate flag conservation at the North Carolina Museum of History. Over time Civil War re-enactment groups learned about the large size of NCMOH’s flag collection and complained to staff about the paucity of Confederate flags on exhibit. In the 1980s staff began to use these complaints as an opportunity to explain the need for conservation funds for specific pieces. This process of criticism and opening conversations led to the NCMOH’s successful adopt-an-artifact program.

10. Treat potential grantors, especially private foundations and corporations, as you would individual donors. Cultivate relationships with their representatives, solicit funds, and follow up by showing appreciation and reporting on the projects the grants funded.

Conservation Assistance Day

Collections staff at the North Carolina Museum of History recently inaugurated a quarterly “Conservation Assistance Day” as a public service and a way to introduce preservation concepts into the museum’s array of public programs. Here’s how it works: whenever members of the public call the museum with questions about how to care for pieces they have at home, a staff member alerts them to the quarterly Conservation Assistance Day schedule and encourages them to sign up for an appointment to meet with one of the museum’s two conservators—Textiles Conservator Paige Myers or Objects Conservator Jennifer French. Each participant can sign up for one half-hour appointment and bring up to three treasures into the museum, where collections staff have a temporary workspace set up behind glass walls, visible from the lobby.

Both conservators meet with attendees who bring mixed media objects containing textile elements. In this scene, Myers and French analyze a fan. The conservators focus on identifying materials in the pieces and giving participants advice on ways to preserve their treasures. They always refer questions about monetary value to a list of qualified appraisers.

One participant brought in this elaborate collage on a hand truck, secured with a bungee cord. The wooden marquetry framed piece contains butterflies and dried leaves on a wool ground and likely dates to the 1880s. A print depicting an Indian warrior and maiden embracing (perhaps Hiawatha and Minnehaha) dominates the assemblage. Conservators pointed out evidence of previous insect infestations and light damage and advised the owner about climate considerations.

Folks who bring their heirlooms in for consultations leave the session pleased with the free service the museum provides, and many sign up for repeat appointments. Moreover, the event generates interest among general museum visitors who can see the artifacts and ongoing staff consultations through the glass walls.

Most history museums do not have conservators, but there are still ways to make the work of preservation more visible to the public. Consider setting up a temporary workstation in the lobby or main exhibit area of your institution to work on small re-housing or artifact cleaning projects. A few folding tables covered with ethafoam sheeting, muslin, or tyvek can create an easy-to-assemble work space. Be ready to explain the activity to visitors and help them understand why the artifacts need improved storage or other conditions. Information about collection dangers or the basic costs of archival storage products can be great to hand out to really curious visitors in these instances and may encourage future support of your institution’s preservation activities.

Have you ever tried bringing “behind the scenes” activities to the forefront of your museum? Besides setting up temporary workspaces and short-term preservation projects, do you have other ideas to make preservation more visible to the public?

A Mothers’ Day Tribute

Traces of motherhood abound in most museum collections. Here are a few highlights from online collections of North Carolina subjects including the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, Digital NC, and the Library of Congress:

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Appearing in Paul Green’s 1937-38 production of “The Lost Colony,” these actresses represented Eleanor White Dare and Virginia Dare. Virginia Dare became iconic in North Carolina and beyond as the first baby born to English parents in America.

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A cabinet card photograph commemorates Ann Alberta Mortenson Mitzen’s relationship with her mother and grandmother in this 1908 studio portrait. Upon Mitzen’s death in 1990, she left her estate to the Davie County Public Library in honor of her mother, Percy Joyce Nichols Mortenson, and her grandmother, Edith Ann Latham Nichols.

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This detail of photographer Margaret Morley’s work in the North Carolina mountain region shows three children clustering around a wan-looking mother. The photograph dates to circa 1900.

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Just as Morley sought to document domestic conditions and familial relationships at the turn of the 20th century, Dorothea Lange created images of motherhood and rural working conditions for the Farm Security Administration more than a generation later. FSA photographs are now digitized and available online. They are a rich source of North Carolina imagery from the late 1930s and early 1940s. If your institution seeks to interpret this period, search the Library of Congress’ collection for documentary photographs of local life during the Depression. In this example, a Wake County mother stands in a doorway holding her baby with her “knee baby” beside her, looking out at Lange.

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In Person County, Lange took this photo of a mother nursing her baby in between washing dishes and straightening up the house. The wife of a tobacco sharecropper, this mother likely wore her Sunday best to greet the photographer.

What kinds of motherhood-related images and artifacts does your institution hold in the public trust? Have you ever tried to engage the community through a special exhibition or other public program incorporating this theme?

Pottery Gravemarkers

Mint Museum Collection

One of the most unique artifact traditions in North Carolina is that of pottery gravemarkers, found mostly in the Piedmont region. Local potters formed them out of salt glazed stoneware, and most surviving examples date to the 19th century.

courtesy, Linda Carnes-McNaughton

Unfortunately, few graves are left with these relics. The fates of some are unknown, like this example stolen more than two years ago from the Cane Creek Friends Cemetery in Snow Camp, Alamance County. In other cases, the gravemarkers are being preserved in North Carolina collections, such as the Mint Museum, The Ackland Art Museum, and the NC Museum of History.

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Unlike Israel Woody’s stolen gravemarker–made by potter Solomon Loy in 1834, most pottery gravestones are shaped like vessels, rather than carved stones. Randolph County potter Jesse Jordan made the gravemarker, now in the NCMOH collection, in 1877, at the death of 3-year-old William Spinks Jordan.

UNC Professor Emeritus, Charles (Terry) Zug, III is the foremost expert on this craft form and there are two upcoming events when you can hear him speak about North Carolina pottery. On April 11th, 2012, he will be presenting a lunchtime lecture at the NC Museum of History from 12:00-1:00. The North Carolina Pottery Center will release his North Carolina Pottery Gravemarker catalog on April 14th, 2012, from 12:00-2:00 p.m. According to the Pottery Center, Zug’s catalog is the first of its kind, a rare grouping of nineteenth- and twentieth-century gravemarkers that take many forms and often have names, dates, and epitaphs inscribed on them. [editor’s note: since posting, Zug has informed us that the catalog release has been postponed indefinitely.]

North Carolina Pottery Center collection

North Carolina Baskets Aren’t Just for Easter

Baskets are a craft form with deep roots in North Carolina.  Because of their light sensitivity and fragility, these artifacts often require special care. The North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources preserves a wide-ranging basket collection, representing various materials, functions, and cultural groups.

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The Cherokee tribe in the western part of the state made baskets primarily of rivercane but also of white oak and honeysuckle. With a variety of patterns and dyes, these crafts comprise North Carolina’s most intricate and persistent artistic basketry tradition.

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Some baskets contained agricultural goods or other food products. Farmers often used split oak baskets for gathering cotton or displaying tobacco leaves. The cotton basket came from a Rowan County platation and dates to the mid-19th century. The tobacco basket was used in Dunn during the first half of the 20th century.

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Leon Berry, an African-American who lived in Mecklenburg, made this basket fish trap in the 1970s. 

Other baskets served more domestic purposes. One basket in the collection was used for holding a baby; another carried dead bodies. Waste baskets and laundry baskets had more mundane functions. A pine needle sewing basket, made by Loretta Oxendine–a member of the Lumbee tribe, reflects the use of local materials and lowland traditions of the Southern Coastal Plain.

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Sudduth's Carolina Snowflake

During the twentieth century, baskets took on new industrial functions and artistic forms. From 1927 to 1995 Murfreesboro, NC was home to Riverside Manufacturing Co., “The World’s Largest Basket Factory.” Farms, canning companies, and A&P Grocery stores were primary clients. (For more information on this past industry, see pages 3-4 of a recent online issue of the Murfreesboro Historical Association’s newsletter.) A 2008 recipient of the Order of the Long Leaf Pine award, Billie Ruth Sudduth, uses basketry techniques to create fine art, including Christmas ornaments that have adorned the White House Christmas tree.

What types of baskets are in your institution’s collection? Have you taken special measures to preserve them or make them accessible?