An event to remember
Keepers of cultural heritage put own slant on "Quad"
|
|
Julie Silverman of the ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center in Burlington displays items slated to go into an exhibit on the indigenous peoples of the Champlain basin. She holds a replica clay cooking pot and fish spear. Surrounding her are an original solid-oak corn pounder (similar to an oversized mortar and pestle); a harpoon; an original sumac sap spile; replica birch sap bucket; replica deer-hide quiver; original soft maple canoe paddle; and original ash and rawhide snowshoes. Stefan Hard |
Toolbox
By MARK BUSHNELL - Published: November 16, 2008
Next year will bring many things: a new presidency, the Chinese Year of the Ox and, in Vermont, the year of the Quad. That's short for quadricentennial, which in this case means the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Samuel de Champlain on the lake that now bears his name.
A century ago, people around the lake celebrated the tercentennial with considerable hoopla, including a visit by President William Howard Taft and the ambassadors of Great Britain and France. While it's unclear what dignitaries might show up this year, it's plain that Vermont's cultural heritage institutions are gearing up for the event.
The ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center in Burlington is using the Quad as an opportunity to update its exhibits. "We will be looking at the first peoples and native people to the region. That is the lens through which we are viewing all our exhibit work," says Julie Silverman, whose title at the center is the whimsical "director of new."
"It is really exciting for us to think more deeply about people in the landscape."
ECHO's exhibit, "Indigenous Expressions: Native Peoples of the Lake Champlain Basin" opens Feb. 14. The center is not viewing this as a typical museum installation. Instead, staff members will be adding an American Indian perspective to existing permanent exhibits.
"We are putting people back into the landscape earlier than we had before," explains Silverman. An example of that will be a piece, tentatively titled "Good Rocks," that will teach visitors how native people valued different rocks for different purposes and even managed to obtain much-coveted rocks from as far away as Labrador, some 1,600 miles distant. In one interactive exhibit, visitors will be able to hit an assortment of rocks to listen to their sound, which is how native people determined whether stones were fit to serve as, say, scrapers or spear points.
"Unless you really spend time getting to know a place, you just aren't aware of a place," Silverman says of the lake region. "We are hoping to get people to know where they belong in the continuum."
Change over time
Commemorating Champlain's arrival comes naturally to folks at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum in Ferrisburgh since "lake history is essentially what we are about all the time," says Eloise Beil, the museum's community relations manager.
For the Quad, the museum will be adding a series of what it calls benchmarks. These will let visitors look at a given spot on the lake — for example, the mouth of the Winooski River — and see how it changed over time.
Centuries ago, the spot was important to American Indians, whose word "winooski" identified the wild onions that grew there and became the name for the river. Many people in 1808, Beil says, would have seen the delta as a useful place to hide. The United States had declared an embargo against British-controlled Canada, but local people who wanted to keep up their traditional trade north broke the embargo. If you were a revenue officer in 1808, however, you would have seen the area as a refuge for outlaws.
By 1898, many people came to see the falls near the river's mouth as a valuable source of power on which new woolen mills ran. Today, with a hydroelectric plant at the site, we might see it as a source for renewable energy.
"What we think this will do is help people get perspective on the 400 years since Champlain's exploration of the area," says Beil. "By coming here and going through (the museum) you can get a better perspective of what a rich place we live in and how central, literally, the lake is."
The maritime museum's Lois McClure, a replica of a mid-1800s sailing canal boat, will serve as the flagship of the quadricentennial and visit communities around the lake during the year. The museum is also pursuing funding to allow the boat to sail south to the Hudson River and New York City and north up the Richelieu River in Quebec.
Artists and artisans
The Robert Hull Fleming Museum at the University of Vermont will ask visitors to bring in their own items that express their memories of the lake or connection to it.
These lent artifacts will complement the museum's exhibit of such diverse objects related to the lake as paintings, documents, furniture, pottery, stone tools, maps and baskets. The museum will bring together objects from its own collections as well as historic documents from the school's Bailey-Howe Library and borrowed items from public and private collections.
"The goal, and what I think will differentiate this show from others, is to highlight the resources of the Champlain watershed and the artists and artisans that were inspired by it," says Fleming Director Janie Cohen. "It's really a great opportunity to share with the community what UVM's collections are in this area."
The show will run from April to September. The items contributed by the public will be added one by one, gradually taking the place of some historic works on paper that would deteriorate if kept exposed to the light for too long.
"To bring it all together and see the story that it tells is really going to be exciting," says Cohen.
Waterways and byways
The Vermont Historical Society is marking the anniversary by making "Vermont Waterways and Byways" the theme for its 2009 History Expo. Exhibits created by scores of local historical societies form the backbone of each expo. For that reason, the theme doesn't specifically mention Lake Champlain, since many communities don't touch the lake or its tributaries.
While many town historical societies will focus on the lake, the theme encourages other communities to "talk about the Connecticut River Valley, for example, or the old native American byways," says Tess Taylor, director of education and public programming for the Vermont Historical Society. "We are interested in paths, trails, any of those things that connected people for culture, commerce, the exchange of ideas, a shared interest or resource."
The Vermont History Expo will be held June 27-28 at the Tunbridge Fair Grounds.
Floating on land
During its 2009 season, Shelburne Museum will focus attention on two of its major artifacts that are intimately linked with the lake: the Ticonderoga steamship and the Colchester Reef lighthouse.
The Ticonderoga, probably the museum's most famous exhibit, has been on dry land since it was moved to the site in 1955. Before then, it was the last steamer to serve Lake Champlain. The ship will soon have a new exhibit on steam technology, says Chip Stulen, the museum's director of buildings and curator of the Ticonderoga.
Stulen also plans to highlight the Ticonderoga's involvement in the tercentenary, when it was used to ferry President Taft, the French and British ambassadors and the governors of Vermont and New York.
The lighthouse began operation in 1871, when the U.S. Life-Saving Service decided that ships needed warning about some nasty shoals off Colchester. By the mid-20th century the lighthouse had become obsolete, and Shelburne Museum founder Electra Havemeyer Webb purchased it and in 1952 had it moved to the museum, where it was placed on a foundation.
Next year, Stulen plans to have a new foundation built. The lighthouse will also get new and updated exhibits inside that will highlight the history of steamers on the lake.
The museum is planning a day to mark the anniversary of Champlain's arrival, but the date has not been set.
In the end, all the institutions will be creating exhibits that focus on what they do best, whether it be highlighting art objects or sailing a replica of a historic boat.
"I think it is a massive undertaking on our part and on the parts of other institutions," says Janie Cohen of the Fleming. "I can't wait to see the collective story it tells, because we are all coming at it from different angles."
Mark Bushnell's column on Vermont history is a weekly feature in Vermont Sunday Magazine.