Historic Cherry Hill
Contents -- March 2011
- From The Desk Of The Director
- A Loss in the Volunteer Ranks
- Education Department News
- Hands-on for Adults
- Grant Award
- Field-tested and Approved!
- The Chronicles Of Curating
- Striking a Balance
- Restoration & Campaign Corner
- 2010 Annual Fund Donor List
- Profiles Of Commitment
From The Desk Of The Director
Our thoughts lately have been focused on big ideas--developing a first-ever logo for Historic Cherry Hill, staff discussions about institutional mission and vision as we embark on a new strategic planning process, and preparations for a session at the upcoming joint annual meeting of Museumwise and the Museum Association of New York.
It's no wonder we've never had a logo. Designing an effective and attractive logo under any circumstances is tricky, but coming up with one that works for a site as complex and rich as Cherry Hill is particularly so. In an online article, "9 Keys to an Effective Logo" Erin Ferree, Founder and Lead Designer of elf design, identifies critical characteristics of a logo as consistency in use, memorability, meaningfulness, uniqueness, professionalism in the quality of the graphics, timelessness, differentiation between colors, unity among the logo's elements, and scalability. Piece o' cake! We have been working with designer Lindsey Crissman on several concepts, and have been fieldtesting what we felt were the most effective ones. We anticipate the unveiling of a shiny new logo for the museum very soon!
We're also spending a lot of time thinking about Historic Cherry Hill's mission. A review of mission and vision is a good first step towards developing a new strategic plan. Missions are not set in stone, and to remain relevant and meet the needs of changing audiences in a dynamic community, regular review is critical. Nor can planning occur in a vacuum. Staff discussions are the first step in a process that will continue with Board, volunteer and community involvement. Evaluation is integrated into all of our programs. The feedback we receive is an important tool in ensuring that our initiatives are both meeting our mission and effectively getting the intended results.
In April, Historic Cherry Hill will present a session at the joint Annual Meeting of Museumwise and the Museum Association of New York, which will be held in Buffalo. The theme of the Museums in Conversation conference is "How Do We Prove the Value of Museums?" The Cherry Hill session, titled "Turning Historic House Museums Upside Down," will address a widely perceived problem of historic sites--that they are dated, static, boring and irrelevant. The session, which will be presented by Curator Deborah Emmons-Andarawis, Communications Coordinator Mary Doehla and me, will illustrate how Cherry Hill has made efforts to be different at the core and to take charge of its image. A YouTube video competition has also been integrated into this year's conference, and Historic Cherry Hill is in the midst of producing a submission. The goal of the videos is to demonstrate the value of our museums. We think ours will do just that.
James R. Krathaus (1933-2011)
A Loss in the Volunteer Ranks
Historic Cherry Hill recently lost a passionate supporter and dedicated volunteer. Jim Krathaus, a volunteer since 2005, died on January 4, 2011. A history buff, Jim came to Cherry Hill as a guide. He loved giving tours, and offered additional time as part of a corps of volunteers who regularly present a special focus tour on the 1827 Cherry Hill murder. Jim also recognized the importance of visibility and fund raising to this small institution, and he chaired the Annual Fund drive for us, enthusiastically soliciting contributions from corporations and community members. He also sought speaking engagements for us to introduce Cherry Hill to new audiences. The Board, staff and volunteers appreciate all of Jim's efforts on behalf of the museum, and he is greatly missed.
[contents]Education Department News
By Becky Watrous
Hands-on for Adults
The Education staff recently debuted a school program adapted for adults. The adapted program makes use of facsimile historical documents, objects and photographs. The debut elicited the following remarks:
Cherry Hill's new outreach program, The Cherry Hill Case, designed for 4th and 5th graders, brings history to life and actually works well for all ages, as was demonstrated at the Woman's Club of Albany recently. Club members quickly appreciated how the concept of sleuth work would hook kids' interest and bring history to life. We loved that part but also used the information gained as a springboard for questions and discussion about life at Cherry Hill during the mid 1800s.
-- Connie Hume, Board Member, The Woman's Club of Albany
If you are interested in scheduling this or one of the museum's other outreach programs for your organization, please call Mary Doehla, Communications Coordinator, for more information at 434-4791.
Grant Award
Historic Cherry Hill has been awarded $10,645 from the New York Council for the Humanities (NYCH), a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, for the tentatively titled program series, Who's Got Class? Status and Power in the 18th Century and Today. The program series will be developed and presented in partnership with the staff at Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site. Six programs will explore the theme that America is not a classless society and never has been by contrasting the meaning of class in the 18th century and today. Humanities scholar Dr. Tamara Thornton, professor of history at the State University at Buffalo, will assist the staffs of both historic house museums in developing the programs and serve as the speaker at a lecture and reception to kick-off the series in September. Other planned programs include a theatrical performance, a lecture on architecture and material culture, focus tours at Historic Cherry Hill and Schuyler Mansion with actors portraying Schuyler and Van Rensselaer family members, a bus trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a concluding panel discussion on class today. NYCH awarded Historic Cherry Hill full funding for the project in a very competitive pool of applicants with only 15% receiving grants. Stay tuned for more details!
Field-tested and Approved!
Students from local Albany schools field
testing the Hudson River Trading Game.
During October, the Hudson River Trading Game: Albany's Connection to the World was field-tested by 145 fourth and fifth graders at three Albany city public schools: Thomas O'Brien Academy of Science and Technology (TOAST); New Scotland Elementary and Eagle Point Elementary. Our thanks to teachers Carrie Ciufo-Ingleston, Barbara Warford and Lynn Willigan for all their efforts in piloting the new program at their respective schools and for contributing many valuable suggestions. The combination history and science program was developed in partnership with the Albany Heritage Area Visitors Center who also generously opened their building at Quackenbush Square as the location for schools to enjoy this program.
[contents]The Chronicles Of Curating
By Deborah Emmons-Andarawis
Striking a Balance
"Since coming to Cherry Hill," I explained to a room of eager listeners, "I've had a split personality." The announcement was made, not in a museum- sponsored support group for schizophrenics, as it might sound, but at the first gathering of "AHIS 511: Artifact Analysis in Historical Scholarship," the course that I am teaching for the Public History department at the University at Albany this semester. In a round of introductions, I was explaining to my new students the two sides of my job at Cherry Hill: oversight of the physical and intellectual dimensions of collections.
Truth be told, it's hard to strike a balance between the two. Like 70,000 neglected children in a one-parent household, the collections are awfully demanding. Recent curatorial endeavors have included inventorying oversized works on paper and planning for their rehousing; negotiating the final throes of Project Empty the Attic (the Director has been spreading nasty rumors that it will be done by April); and designing a light reduction strategy for the historic house as a complement to our window restoration project. The physical demands of the collection always feel like an emergency, and the completion of one project is often contingent upon the execution of several others: the attic must be emptied in order for the insulation phase of restoration to begin; infested trunks from the attic need to be frozen in order to be safely rehoused in the collections center; shelves need to be purchased and collections rearranged in order for additional collections to be accommodated; and light reduction strategies must be investigated before storm windows can be ordered because tinted exterior glazing is one option for light reduction. Is it any wonder that research, intellectual access, and academic pursuits are sometimes asked to play second fiddle?
All that said, Historic Cherry Hill has been hitting the intellectual side of the equation pretty hard these days. Last semester, students in the University at Albany's Material Culture Studies course used our collections as the foci of their final projects. And this semester, my new course is entirely centered at Cherry Hill. This past Tuesday, students sat around the tables in our research room and discussed what true historic sites are--not pilgrimage sites and shrines to "great" Americans, not places to make history "interesting." Rather, at their best, they are complex, integrated documents comprised of historic structure(s), contextual landscape, household contents, and family papers. Historic sites are not mere backdrops of history, convenient to make historical figures vivid. They embody history, they do not merely illustrate it. And, because Historic Cherry Hill is a remarkably complete document, we are able to draw from its comprehensive resources for academic research. This is the goal of AHIS 511: assisting students in the process of using the site and its various components as source material in their own research, which will culminate in a 20-30- page paper.
With one class under my belt, all I can say is?so far, so good! Despite a toilet apparently not committed to flushing, students hung in through the two-hour class and lingered 20 minutes afterward, clearly captured by the scope and scale of the collection. A colleague and a longtime friend of Cherry Hill once said that it could be "the museum that launched a thousand dissertations." Now, we are on our way.
[contents]
A view of the scaffolding in place with needle
beams anchored on lally columns to hold the weight
of the house while sill and post work is being done.
The wood to the right is the recently replaced
sill, the wood to the left shows the older
sill to be replaced.
A view of the original lath back in place,
awaiting plaster.
View of a temporary Plexiglas window.
The original window has been removed for
restoration work at off-site workshop.
Restoration & Campaign Corner
The Restoration Project has continued with delays made inevitable by the winter weather. The good news is that sill work has been accomplished on the north end of the eastern facade of the house--where the sill was replaced in sections across the entire north end, and Dutchman repairs were carried out on posts as well as interior and exterior studs. Since accomplishing the sill work on the north end, the original brick nogging and the original lath have been put back in place on the interior of the North Parlor. Once the wall has been plastered the interior structural work in that room will be complete. All eyes are turned to the southern end of the eastern fa?ade where exterior post repairs have been carried out. An upcoming meeting with the architectural team and restoration firm will identify the extent to which the sill will need replacement on the south end. In addition to the structural work, restoration workers have also been in the process of removing windows from the house for restoration at an off-site workshop. Several restored windows have been reinstalled in the house.
On the fund raising front, we continue to make progress towards our fourth benchmark with the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). We have until July to meet the Challenge Grant benchmark. We have received two grants totaling $350,000 from the Environmental Protection Fund and a generous grant of $12,500 from the Equinox Foundation all made in support of the restoration project and capital campaign. These grants will allow us to complete phases 1 and 2 of the 4- phase project, and support from the State of New York and the Equinox Foundation for this critical work is greatly appreciated.
Also, many thanks to the following individuals for recent gifts that will count towards the benchmark:
Joan Gould
Eileen Finn
Ann McGuiness
Harry & Kathy Odabashian
Anonymous
Mr. and Mrs. Freeman T. Putney, Jr.
Anonymous
Mr. and Mrs. James Sherin
2010 Annual Fund Donor List
|
$5,000-$10,000
$1,000-$2,999
$500-$999
$250-$499
$100-$249 |
$100-$249 (cont.)
$50-$99
Up to $49
*denotes 2010 Board member |
Profiles Of Commitment
Historic Cherry Hill sits on a hill, surrounded by trees. Lots of trees. And gardens. Lots of gardens. As trees tend to shed their leaves in the fall here in the northeast and as gardens tend to sprout weeds at every available opportunity, the museum finds yard work a necessary evil. Luckily for the staff, a recent addition to the volunteer family at Historic Cherry Hill yielded a talented green thumb who also has a workhorse ethic when it comes to battling said weeds and leaves. Mary Anne Chiariello came by the museum for a restoration tour one day and never really left! Well, she left, but she returned, every week to weed the gardens and rake the grounds. When the fall gave way to winter, she moved her volunteer efforts indoors--in particular to the Edward Frisbee Center for Collections and Research--where she is currently conducting an in-depth study of the historical landscape of the Cherry Hill grounds. When asked why she decided to volunteer at Historic Cherry Hill, Mary Anne said "I toured Cherry Hill, became excited by the restoration process and wanted to help in some way. The gardens seemed to need a bit of attention and since gardening is a special interest of mine, I knew I would enjoy improving their appearance. So I signed on as a weeder and "branched" out from there." The museum and the lawn are eternally grateful for Mary Anne's hard work and dedication.
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