{"id":15283,"date":"2017-10-16T21:52:14","date_gmt":"2017-10-16T21:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.golive.clarku.edu\/news\/2017\/10\/16\/students-contribute-research-to-worcester-art-museums-historic-photo-exhibition\/"},"modified":"2025-04-03T10:06:43","modified_gmt":"2025-04-03T14:06:43","slug":"students-contribute-research-to-worcester-art-museums-historic-photo-exhibition","status":"publish","type":"story","link":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/2017\/10\/16\/students-contribute-research-to-worcester-art-museums-historic-photo-exhibition\/","title":{"rendered":"Students contribute research to Worcester Art Museum’s historic photo exhibition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Rediscovering the story of a community with photos<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Professor Greenwood’s Problems of Practice course, undergraduates (such as Charlotte Maxwell ’17, above) studied archives to trace family histories and unlock stories behind William Bullard’s turn-of-the-century photographs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Dillon family sits for a portrait in their home in Worcester\u2019s Beaver Brook neighborhood. It\u2019s 1904, and their neighbor, a photographer named Charles Bullard, perches behind the camera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"2017
This 1904 photograph of the Dillon family of Worcester appears in the Worcester Art Museum’s current exhibition of William Bullard’s photographs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The African-American Dillons \u2014 Thomas, Margaret and their three children \u2014 are dressed in their Sunday best. Their parlor displays an air of middle-class respectability: lace curtains, wallpaper, framed portraits \u2014 and a poster of President Theodore Roosevelt\u2019s 1902 visit to Worcester.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why did the Dillons revere Roosevelt? Why did the 26th U.S. president visit Worcester? And did the parlor\u2019s appearance indicate that the Dillons were economically well off, or that the coachman and his wife aspired to rise into the middle class?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are just some of the questions that sparked conversations among 10 undergraduate students, their professors, and several area residents last spring in \u201cPublic History: Race, Photography and Community,\u201d a Problems of Practice<\/a> history<\/a> seminar at Clark University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the course, taught by Janette Greenwood<\/a>, professor of history<\/a>, and Nancy Burns, associate curator of prints, drawings and photographs at the Worcester Art Museum<\/a>, the students researched nearly 20 of the 225 photographs Bullard took of his neighbors from the Beaver Brook area of Worcester. More than 80 of the photographs are on display as part of the exhibition, “Rediscovering an American Community of Color: The Photographs of William Bullard,<\/a>” which runs through Feb. 25, 2018, at the museum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greenwood, Burns and Frank Morrill, a local historian who owns Bullard\u2019s collection of 5,400 photographs and glass negatives, have been working on the exhibition for nearly four years. Bullard, who was white, lived several years in the racially and ethnically mixed neighborhood of Beaver Brook, home to African-Americans from the South, Native Americans from the region, and immigrants from all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Read more<\/a> about the discovery of William Bullard’s photographs, the involvement of Professor Janette Greenwood and her students, and the exhibition at the Worcester Art Museum.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In the POP course, each student researched at least one photo and interviewed the descendants<\/a> of Bullard\u2019s \u201csitters,\u201d as the people in the portraits are called. Their research informs essays on a student-created website<\/a> about the Bullard exhibition, as well as the labels accompanying some of the photographs hung at the museum. The students also blogged about their experience<\/a> for the museum’s website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In May, the students made their final presentations in anticipation of the exhibition. By focusing their Power Point talks on a classmate\u2019s findings, each student practiced presenting research about a photograph. Many of the students, including several 2017 graduates, will attend the museum\u2019s Master Series Third Thursday event<\/a> on Oct. 19 and be available for questions about the photos they researched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So why did <\/em>the Dillon family display the Teddy Roosevelt poster?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMany African-Americans remained loyal to the Republican Party at the turn of the century because they associated the party with Lincoln, emancipation and hope,\u201d Charlotte Maxwell \u201917 explained during her presentation of research by her classmate and fellow history major, Stefan Sprinckm\u00f6ller Alayza \u201917.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The poster commemorated Roosevelt\u2019s visit two years earlier as a guest of the Worcester Agricultural Society, where more than 25,000 people greeted him. \u201cNever since the first settlers staked out their home sites were there so many people in Worcester in one day,\u201d the Worcester Spy<\/em> newspaper reported. Roosevelt would return in 1905 to give Commencement speeches at Clark and Holy Cross.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Maxwell\u2019s presentation, the class, along with Morrill and several descendants of Bullard\u2019s sitters, discussed and analyzed the photo \u2014 the Dillons\u2019 dress, their facial expressions, and the interior of their home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Janette
History Professor Janette Greenwood<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Yet Greenwood cautioned the students not to assume too much about the family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to make some of these subtle distinctions about what we know and don\u2019t know,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sprinckm\u00f6ller Alayza\u2019s research about Roosevelt met the goal of the assignment, she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just an antiquarian exercise about one family in Worcester, but it\u2019s about a much larger national story taking place,\u201d Greenwood said. \u201cThis is a model of starting with the particular, teasing out the local context and connecting it to the national.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a really important part of this exhibition, because this is about an American community of color,\u201d she added. \u201cIt\u2019s not just about Worcester; it\u2019s not just about Beaver Brook. We see national currents flowing through these photographs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Sprinckm\u00f6ller Alayza, the project “has been a rewarding and challenging experience,” he writes in a blog article<\/a> for the museum. “Looking back at our efforts as a class this semester, I can say we have put the puzzle pieces together.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rediscovering the story of a community with photos<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":15284,"template":"","meta":{"story_color":"#525250","story_headerImg":15284,"section_label":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[225],"displayed_author":[242],"featured":[],"topic":[249,250,159,151,181,406,207,342,335,162,120,127,121,172],"class_list":["post-15283","story","type-story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-humanities","displayed_author-meredith-woodward-king","topic-art-and-art-history","topic-arts","topic-community-research-partnerships","topic-hands-on-learning","topic-history","topic-liberal-education-and-effective-practice-leep","topic-massachusetts","topic-problems-of-practice-pop","topic-race-and-ethnicity","topic-research","topic-student-projects","topic-undergraduate-research","topic-undergraduate-students","topic-worcester"],"yoast_head":"\nStudents contribute research to Worcester Art Museum’s historic photo 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