Voices of the Past
The Frederic Remington Art Museum is one of the small museums of the North Country still in existence. Given that Frederic Remington (1861-1909) was a world class artist revered for his impressionist and realistic paintings and bronze sculptures, you would expect his art work to be dispersed throughout the world and owned by large museums as well as rich western patrons. However, the Frederic Remington Art Museum in Ogdensburg, New York, possesses the largest collection of Remington artwork in the world.
Emily chose to document the Frederic Remington Art Museum through interviews with staff members she met while working there as well as through photos of the past and present state of the museum. The interviews catered to the oral history side of this project. The photos catered to her documentarian side. She wanted to present the oral history that she found both in audio as well as visual formats so the audience could experience the development of the museum through the eyes and ears of the people who have changed the museum personally. See the transcripts of her interviews and listen to the interviews here!
Emily also took advantage of the option to create a website about her oral history research and documentary. Find her website here!
Every family has a special place they call home, whether it is the town you grew up in, a special summer house, the house in which you grew up, or another place that is meaningful to your family. Anna’s family, the McAlister family, calls The Country Club of Pittsfield “home.” This special place is a place everyone in her family enjoys; they all have spent many summer days, many family dinners, dances, and weddings here, and they all have made many memories together here. The Country Club of Pittsfield hasn’t always been Anna’s family’s home or a place with so much meaning. This special place would have never been so meaningful to them without her grandfather, William H McAlister Jr.
Anna’s grandfather was the president of the Country Club beginning in 1976, and he faced many challenges leading a nearly 100-year-old Club in a region dominated by traditional values involving race, gender, and economic status. Anna interviewed her mother, grandmother, Mr. Atherton (the vice president of the Club during her grandfather’s tenure), and other members of her family in order to capture the culture of the club before, during, and after her grandfather was president. As Anna learned, her grandfather was instrumental in eliminating racial, class, and gender restrictions at the Club. See the transcripts of her interviews and listen to the interviews here!
As Alanna Wormwood explains on her website: “The purpose of this project was to use the beautiful, fascinating art of oral history to better understand the context of psychiatry in northern New York in relation to the community.” She argues that in Ogdensburg, NY, the St. Lawrence Psychiatric Center, previously known as the St. Lawrence State Hospital, was “a uniting factor for the community.” She explains that “by helping those in need,” this institution “exemplified many of the ideals small north country towns like Ogdensburg epitomize. A sense of community and compassion for others can be found in Ogdensburg, and those same values are mirrored in the psychiatric treatment that can be found in the north country.”
Alanna interviewed Katherine Briggs and Brian Doe, both of whom possess a great deal of knowledge about the Psychiatric Center and its relationship with the community. See the transcripts of his interviews and listen to the interviews here!
Alanna also took advantage of the option to create a website about her oral history research. Find her website here!
Created by Emily Baker with materials provided by students from the class, "Voices of the Past"
Interviewees & interviewers signed release forms, allowing interviews to be placed on the web.