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Photo: Laura A. Macaluso

Public Art & Public History

Projects & Presentations

A Love Letter to Little Free Libraries in Lynchburg

Dear Reader, The Little Free Library movement began in 2009 in Hudson, Wisconsin and quickly spread across the United States and beyond.1 Here in Lynchburg, I began noticing the growth of Little Free Libraries, especially this year, when coronavirus prevented in-person visits to libraries, archives, and museums which for me, are like second homes…

December 2020

Expanding the Traditional Cultural Narrative in House Museums: When the Beatles Became Part of the National Trust Legacy

This presentation is an assessment of the field of historic houses, and the ways in which the inclusion of the Beatles childhood homes in Liverpool changed the longstanding and traditional narrative of historic house preservation in the United Kingdom. Paul McCartney’s childhood and teenage home at 20 Forthlin Road became a property of the National Trust in 1995…

"It was Fifty Years Ago Today," Nova University Lisbon, Portugal June 2020 / Canceled due to COVID-19

Roman Catholicism in the Hill City: A Digital Exhibit

The closing of Holy Cross Regional School at the end of the academic year in June 2020 marks the end of an era in Lynchburg. In an environment dominated by Protestant, and in particular Southern Baptist churches and culture, the Catholic history of the Hill City is a unique testament to the presence of a world-wide faith community which traces its lineage to the first century A.D…

Digital Exhibit @Lynchburg Museum April 2020 onward

We the Women: Commemorating 100 Years of the 19th Amendment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCdQg6N7ylo The year 2020 will be the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.  Our museum-based exhibit project is a first look at the unexpected and compelling history of the women’s suffrage movement in Lynchburg, Virginia.  The exhibit project, titled Commemorating 100 Years of Women’s Suffrage in Lynchburg…

Lynchburg Museum @Old Court House March 2020-January 2021

Five Forks [Confederate] Battle Flag: A Community Perspective

In January 2020, the Lynchburg Museum created an exhibit around a Confederate battle flag recently conserved and in the collection of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond.  The potential flag display is a controversial issue for many people in our community and well beyond. Few symbols in American history elicit such wide-ranging emotions as the iconography of the Confederate battle flag…

Lynchburg Museum @ Old Court House January 2020

A Point in History: Following the Food from Hearth to Table with the Chronicles of Adam

For the first time in the interpretive programming of the historic house Point of Honor, an evening tour will be offered to the public created from the perspective of the enslaved people who lived and worked on the antebellum plantation. Offering a “new point of view” of the historic plantation house…

Lynchburg Museum @Point of Honor November 1-2, 2019

Paul Wayland Bartlett’s Lafayette on Horseback and World War I

In October of 2017, dignitaries and the public assembled in Versailles, France to witness the rededication of two monumental bronze sculptures: one of Pershing and one of Lafayette, which had been commissioned, but never completed, in the aftermath of World War I. What the contemporary celebrants seemed to not know is that Paul Wayland Bartlett’s monument to Lafayette was originally conceived as a gift to the French people…

Cultural and Historic Preservation Conference: Preservation and Memory, Salve Regina University, Newport, RI October 2019

Interpretation Intervention: Crafting History and a Place of Honor for Mary Brice at Point of Honor

This ongoing project seeks to re-assess the curatorial and programmatic presentation of content at Point of Honor, an antebellum house located in a predominantly African American neighborhood overlooking downtown Lynchburg, Virginia. The long-standing public interpretation of the Federal style house rests almost exclusively on the material culture and knowledge-making around its white inhabitants through two-hundred years of ownership…

Lynchburg Museum @Point of Honor 2019 - ongoing