Abby Epplett, Historian

Last Saturday — June 15, 2024 — I went on an adventure to New Bedford, MA. My first stop was New Bedford Art Museum . This miniature museum with three excellent galleries is a great place to spend an hour looking at contemporary art by local artists and big names from around the country. During my visit, the two exhibitions on display were Pathfinders: Paving the Glass Revolution in the U.S. and Transformations .

My second stop during my adventure last Sunday was Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, MA. This small, two-story museum with an outdoor sculpture garden doubles as a venue for programs and events, weddings, and classes. Five exhibits were on display during my visit, including a portrait collection, illustrations by a local high schooler, a basketball-inspired installation, button-ladened fashion pieces, and sci-fi sculptures.

For all my gallivanting across Massachusetts, I have never toured the Massachusetts State House! Fortunately, the government website provides a virtual tour of these space , allowing me to see panoramic images on the interior from the comfort of my home. This tour highlights nine areas in the statehouse with unique artwork and furniture. 1 st Floor The 1 st Floor of the State House has no artifacts and lists only a few points of interest: house clerk, house council, hearing rooms, house minority, and state bookstore. I wish some explanation had been offered on why this section was left blank, or that details were giving for what business happened in each of the points of interest. 2 nd Floor The 2 nd listed the state auditor, state treasurer, senate counsel, and another hearing room as points of interests in addition to listing several featured areas. Each featured area was represented by a colorful circle on the map of the floor and also in a list underneat

For my second major stop during my adventure in Yarmouth, MA on Cape Cod in late September 2023, I visited the Edward Gorey House . Located down the street from Historic New England’s Winslow Crocker House , this museum memorializes the life of a illustrator, author, and Broadway costume designer. While the house appears ordinary from the exterior, Edward St. John Gorey used his love of whimsy and the macabre while decorating. Each year, a new exhibit showcases another facet of his life.

The history of animation is a common enough topic that multiple excellent articles and books already exist. My introduction focuses specifically on themes that will arise during the creation of the hypothetical animated musical, including the art of the ancient world and medieval period, parallels between world religions, the influence of animation on other media, the erasure of non-white and working-class figures from history, censorship, and the evolution of animation from hand-drawn to computer animated. Using a moving image to tell a story came long before the advent of animation. Pottery in Ancient Greece and later Ancient Rome depicted gods, heroes, and everyday life, often with multiple scenes from the same story. Medieval churches told stories to a population with a low literacy rate through the use of icons, stained glass, and illumination on manuscripts. This visual storytelling was not limited to Christianity, as practitioners of Hinduism and Buddhism created art

For the 1965/1966 edition of The Lord of the Rings released in the United States by Ballantine Books , J.R.R. Tolkien wrote a five-page foreword giving context to his writing process, explaining inspirations behind the story, and rebuking his critics. While Tolkien insisted in this essay, just as he did in letters to fans and during interviews, that little in the book was based on reality, the influence of industrialization and the World Wars, trends in music and art, and historical discoveries affected his ideology presented in the novels. I will use the literary criticism theory of cultural studies to examine this foreword by describing important events that occurred concurrently with the many drafts of the manuscript. Future posts will demonstrate how these events influenced the text itself and my hypothetical animated musical. Near the beginning of the letter, Tolkien explained that one of his primary interests was writing “the mythology and legends of the Eldar Days”

After visiting Longfellow House Washington Headquarters and Cooper-Frost-Austin House during my history adventure through Cambridge, MA back in August 2023, my third major stop was Harvard Art Museums . Part of the Harvard University campus, the three museums making up the unified building are Fogg Museum, Busch-Reisinger Museum, and Arthur M. Sackler Museum. According to the official website , Fogg Museum is the eldest of the three, first opening in a different building in 1895. Four years earlier, in 1891, Elizabeth Perkins Fogg bequeathed $200,000 and Asian art to build a museum in honor of her predeceased husband, William Hayes Fogg , who made his fortune as a merchant in the China Trade just after the Opium Wars . (Mr. Fogg happened to be from South Berwick, ME, the same town as two Historic New England [HNE] properties: Sarah Orne Jewett House and Hamilton House .) Next came Busch-Reisinger Museum , originally founded as the Germanic M

During my trip to the Berkshires in July 2023, I visited The Mount in Lenox, MA to see the SculptureNow art installation. Originally the home of American author and designer Edith Wharton , The Mount is currently a historic house museum with vast grounds, including gardens and walking trails. The annual SculptureNow event allows artists to display their work in an open air environment. About The Mount Edith Wharton previously appeared on this blog during my post on Beauport, the Sleeper-McCann House , which is now owned by Historic New England (HNE) . She was friends with interior designer Henry Davis Sleeper , who originally built that property as his dream home. Other members of the writer-artist social circle included Ogden Codman, Jr. of HNE’s Codman Estate , Sarah Orne Jewett of HNE’s Sarah Orne Jewett House Museum & Visitor Center , Isabella Stewart Gardner who built a self-titled museum in Boston , and many others in the New England elite at the be