September 24, 2021
By Kelly Fu, '22
One of the delights of attending a Winterthur field trip is the opportunity to go behind the scenes to see things that the average museum visitor would not get to experience. Yet oftentimes, the most fascinating of these experiences involve objects that are out of the public view precisely because they are not awe-inspiring at first glance.
One such object that we saw at Gunston Hall was the wooden frame of a side chair. The ...
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August 25, 2021
By Jena Gilbert Merrill, '22
On June 17, 2021, the WPAMC fellows visited the Mt. Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore for a walking tour. After three full days of shuffling through historic houses, meandering around the sprawling estates in which these houses are situated, and investigating the various ways that people inhabited and related to these spaces in the past, we began the walking tour standing on the corner of a city block in Baltimore. While ...
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August 19, 2021
By Naomi Subotnick, '22
When we visit a museum or historic site, our attention is often directed to the collection objects on display, or the architectural elements of the building: rarely do we think about other interpretive tools utilized to transform exhibitions into narrative spaces. While visiting the Maryland State House during Winterthur’s Southern Field Study Trip, I had the opportunity to reflect on the other material presences that define ...
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August 19, 2021
By Emily Bach, '22
During this summer's Southern Field Study Trip, the Winterthur fellows visited a variety of historic house museums and learned about their different approaches to interpretation and historic preservation. While climbing up steep staircases, navigating narrow hallways, and crossing expansive tracts of lands, the issue of accessibility frequently popped into my mind. As is to be expected of structures built in the eighteenth and ...
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