By Lydia Fair, 2019 Tom Desilets Memorial Intern
As a lifelong resident of Framingham, and now a Framingham State University senior, I’ve passed the historic buildings on the Common countless times. However, it wasn’t until I viewed the exhibit, History in the Stitches: Framingham Fashion through the Centuries in 2017 that I finally saw inside of one of the buildings, the Edgell Memorial Library, that had long piqued my interest. What stood out to me in the exhibit beyond the visual appeal of the intricate fabrics and changing silhouettes was the fact that the women who wore them were from Framingham.
This led me to take a History of Costume course this past semester which is how I came to find out about the Tom Desilets Memorial Internship. As a Communication Arts major, I’m passionate about stories both past and present. The preservation of artifacts, garments and documents is vital to learning how to better tell stories about who we were and are.
The importance of telling truthful stories can be seen in the ongoing research being done to highlight the missing perspectives of Black and Native Americans in Framingham’s collection, which will be featured in the upcoming Top Ten exhibit. On Wednesday, I was able to go inside the vaults at the Massachusetts Archives and Commonwealth Museum and learn about the process of museum research. The vast amount of information contained in one place was unbelievable!
This week has been full of new experiences both at the Framingham History Center and in the community. I helped take down the WWI Exhibit, An American Town in WWI, which told the stories of seven women and men from Framingham whose lives were touched by war. Now, I am researching ways to digitize the exhibit so that it can be available on the FHC website. On Tuesday, the Framingham History Center brought a Civil War educational program to eighth graders at Cameron Middle School. I assisted with two outdoor games called “Hoops and Graces” which gave students a chance to see how children occupied their free time with simple sticks and hoops.
I was trained by Curator Stacen Goldman on the General Resource Filing project at the Old Academy which creates scans of physical copies of historical documents used for research at the museum. The two folders I worked with this week were “Framingham 1950-1975″ and “Framingham’s 250th Anniversary, June 1950”. This will be an ongoing project this summer. While I was taking down the WWI exhibit, I learned aspects of curatorial work such as how to carefully handle and store artifacts. I also learned that each object in the collection has its own unique ID number based on when it came into the collection.
I am already appreciating the hands-on nature of this internship, and the opportunity to gain insight into the behind-the-scenes workings of a museum. I’m looking forward to spending my summer at the Framingham History Center and will be writing about more of my experiences soon.