Join us for a conversation with Middlebury College professor emeritus John Elder as he investigates the history and form of Thoreau’s box flute, which now resides in the Concord Museum’s collection. Thoreau inherited the flute upon the death of his beloved brother, John. The instrument reveals the role of music in the Thoreau family as well as links the evolution of woodwinds to broader currents of thought in the mid-nineteenth century. The talk will be complemented with Elder playing some…
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Paul Revere and his midnight ride—immortalized as the harbinger of the dramatic escalation of the American colonial rebellion against the British Empire—has been celebrated in tales and songs throughout the centuries. But what really happened on April 18, 1775? Experts shed light on the legendary ride and the man behind it, revealing the fascinating life of a fabled national hero who witnessed the birth of a nation. Nina Zannieri is the Executive Director of the Paul Revere Memorial Association…
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Learn the ins and outs of the muskets of the Concord Museum’s collection that were fired on the Old North Bridge on April 19, 1775, in the up-close educational setting of the Lisa H. Foote History Learning Center. Experts Joel Boey, of Skinner Auctioneers and Appraisals, and the Concord Museum’s Curator, David Wood, explore the objects that played a part in the events of the fateful day that began an eight-year fight for independence. In this unique setting, participants will…
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Dr. Kerri Greenidge, Director of American Studies at Tufts University, reestablishes William Monroe Trotter’s essential place in the pantheon of American civil rights heroes. For more than thirty years, the Harvard-educated Trotter edited and published the Guardian, a weekly Boston newspaper that was read across the nation. Trotter advocated for a radical vision of black liberation that prefigured leaders such as Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. Join us as Greenidge unpacks this indefatigable figure whose underappreciated…
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Art and Reform: The Saturday Evening Girls The Saturday Evening Girls take center stage at this year’s annual Mary Lesneski Memorial Lecture and Reception. Young immigrant women, living in the tenements of the North End in early 20th century Boston, gathered weekly to create colorful and often lyrical ceramics under the enterprise Paul Revere Pottery. The wares were sold to fund the young women’s informal education, at a time when there was a void in social and educational opportunities for…
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Join Harvard Professor and former Dean of the Radcliffe Institute Lisabeth Cohen in a conversation on how contested topics in American history are conveyed to the public through museum exhibits, public memorials, and reenactments. How do museums related to our nation’s founding handle the stories of indigenous people and slavery? Should memorials to Civil War heroes remain standing? How do we best discuss more contemporary topics such as the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War can in the public…
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