Abby Epplett, Historian

From November 2 through November 4, I attended the 2022 Annual NEMA ( New England Museum Association ) Conference as a General Scholarship Recipient , which I received thanks to “ Connecticut Humanities and the Connecticut Office of the Arts ; MassHumanities ; Mass Cultural Council ; Vermont Humanities ; and NEMA Annual Appeal donors. After two years of attending virtually, the 104 th edition of the conference was back in-person at the Sheraton Hotel in Springfield, Massachusetts . Reinventing Membership for a Hybrid Future During the first session of the day, speakers Brendan Ciecko of Cuseum and Kathleen Porter of the Trustees spoke about their efforts to promote online and virtual programming for cultural organizations during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and how this shift changed the way museum will interact with members in the future. Ciecko emphasized the changes made by other cultural organizations, relating the findings of the Cuseum study to a...

During my three-day trip of the Portsmouth, New Hampshire area, I visited Old York Historical Society in York, Maine. The society owns and maintains several buildings and historic properties that I saw on my trip, including their Museum Center, Jefferds Tavern, York Corner Schoolhouse, the Old Gaol, and Emerson-Wilcox House.

I took a three day mini-vacation to the Mystic / Lyme area of Connecticut and visited many museums, houses, and other history stops. Nearly half my time was spent at Mystic Seaport Museum , a living history museum in Mystic, CT. The attraction was so expansive that I am creating a six-part miniseries about the fantastic experience. These posts will include two parts on “Seaport Village”, “Preservation Shipyard”, “Galleries”, “Boats, Signs, & Shows”, and “Bonus Houses”.

This past Saturday — July 6, 2024 — I visited three stops in the Passport to History developed by Old Colony History Museum , along with one bonus stop. Attleboro Area Industrial Museum was the second stop on my trip. I had been meaning to visit this museum since learning about it at the Industrial History New England Lunch on Day 1 of NEMA Conference 2022 , so this visit checks off another item from my very long museum bucket list.

To generate new ideas for upcoming trips, I recently read the book 50 States 5000 Ideas written by Joe Yogerst , fact-checked Meg Weaver , and published by  National Geographic  in February 2017, and distributed by Simon & Schuster . The full-color paperback edition has 288 pages of facts and photographs and makes an excellent coffee table book for roadtrippers or a basic starting point for people who want to begin traveling but do not know where to begin. Since the book covers a lot of ground, and not always successfully, the author highlights major attractions and large cities, along with a few smaller towns, but does not give details on most location. I experienced several frustrations while reading the book. States and provinces appear in alphabetical order, rather than by region, meaning New Mexico is listed between New Jersey and New York, rather than with Utah, Arizona, and Nevada. The side bars and colored boxes with additional information interrupted ...

This past Saturday — July 6, 2024 — I visited three stops in the Passport to History developed by Old Colony History Museum , along with one bonus stop. The third stop for the passport book, along with the fourth and final stop for the day, was the Carpenter Museum at Rehoboth Antiquarian Society , which included a pair of quick history stops in the area. The museum received its name not from an occupation but a family, as the Carpenters donated towards the construction of the main museum building, which looks like an 18 th century farmhouse.

Managed by the Emerald Necklace Conservancy  since 2001, this series of gardens was design by American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted over a period of eighteen years, from 1878 to 1896. Other well-known public gardens designed by Olmsted include Central Park in Manhattan, New York and the U.S. Capitol Grounds in Washington, D.C. Additionally, Olmstead designed landscapes for privately owned homes, including Biltmore in Asheville, North Carolina for the Vanderbilt family, and his own estate in Brookline, Massachusetts, which is now part of the National Park Service .

In early September, I took a three-day trip to the Greater Portsmouth, New Hampshire area. On my first stop, I visited Strawbery Banke, an amazing living history museum in Portsmouth. The organization is named after the original village founded in New Hampshire by English colonists in 1623, and its ten-acre property was a community called Puddle Dock until the 1950s.

Last weekend, I attended birthday celebrations for Rhode Island Historical Society (RIHS) and the city of Worcester, Massachusetts. As a Smithsonian Affiliate and member of the New England Museum Association,  RIHS is celebrating the 200th anniversary of their founding throughout the this year with parties themed in 50 year intervals . The 1872 Jubilee Birthday Party was held on June 11 at the John Brown House in Providence, RI and was the second in the series. The event was free and open to the public.  Kevin Doyle's Roscommon Soles  provided live music. Named for a county in Ireland, the four-person group combined traditional Irish music on flute, guitar, uilleann pipes, and bodhrán with intricate tap dance. Doyle is an award-winning dancer who has been recognized by the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and National Heritage Fellowship, and his skilled steps brought extra energy to the performance. Another highlight of the celeb...

From November 2 through November 4, I attended the 2022 Annual NEMA ( New England Museum Association ) Conference as a General Scholarship Recipient , which I received thanks to “ Connecticut Humanities and the Connecticut Office of the Arts ; MassHumanities ; Mass Cultural Council ; Vermont Humanities ; and NEMA Annual Appeal donors. After two years of attending virtually, the 104 th edition of the conference was back in-person at the Sheraton Hotel in Springfield, Massachusetts Keynote Session: Becoming Good Ancestors: A Sense of Oneness Before the keynote, NEMA Executive Director Dan Yaeger began with opening remarks about the last time the conference had gone on hiatus, which was during World War II when some museum workers were drafted. He introduced the new Value Statements and Mission Statement, which highlight the need for equitable treatment of all people, dismantling oppressive structures within the museum world, addressing the global climate cri...