Make History

Sarah Orne Jewett House Museum

You are invited to Make History at the Sarah Orne Jewett House Museum

5 Portland Street South Berwick, Maine

Historic New England celebrates the third annual Make History, an exhibition featuring the work of Berwick Academy and Marshwood High School art and music students with a reception on Thursday, May 2, from 6 p.m. – 8 p.m. at the Sarah Orne Jewett House Museum and Visitor Center and Education Space.

Both the exhibition and the reception are free and open to the public. Make History is the culmination of an educational collaboration with educators Seth Hurd, Raegan Russell, Jeff Vinciguerra, and Julia Einstein, in which students were inspired to create personal meanings from the Sarah Orne Jewett House story through visual and performance-based interpretations. On visits to the Sarah Orne Jewett House Museum, students explored rooms and collections, including objects by Marcia Oakes Woodbury and Charles Woodbury, Sarah Wyman Whitman, and Celia Thaxter, investigating the influence of Jewett’s surroundings on her work. One visit took the form of “classroom in the museum,” as students selected a space in the house to study, sketch, or write. Students and teachers came just as in 1891, when Jewett invited artist friends Marcia Oakes and Charles Woodbury to work in her home to immerse themselves in her surroundings and her writing to develop the drawings that would become the illustrations for her book, Deephaven.”

The project was the conceived by Historic New England Maine Education Program Coordinator Julia Einstein. Said Einstein, “I enjoy creating learning spaces to cultivate the creative process. New thinking, and fresh ways of looking excite young people to come up with original ideas.” Visitors to the exhibition will look for ways the students have connected art and history. Two students from Berwick Academy’s Senior Studio Seminar share their thoughts. Eila Shea said, “What resonated with me the most about the Sarah Orne Jewett House were the details, and objects that made up each room. I focused on the small, but beautiful, and often peculiar things that told stories about the history of the house.” Eliana Fleischer spoke of how she found “a way to understand who a person is, is by the books they read. For an author, the books they write serve the same purpose.” Eliana goes on to describe how “Inside Sarah Orne Jewett’s house there is a beautiful library stacked high with books, and filled with furniture of various shapes and textures. I made a print which combines fragments of texture with words that were influenced by that creative place.”

Marshwood High School’s Jeff Vinciguerra, describes how “Everything about this project fits perfectly with my own philosophies as an educator. When students are tasked with designing and making a piece of art which will be displayed in the community, that increased sense of responsibility kicks the students creativity and work ethic into high gear. As an educator I really enjoy this project because it takes students out of the classroom and into the real world and allows us all to see what they are really capable of. The results are consistently impressive. I’m always proud of their hard work and diligent efforts. And to see them connecting in some way to the past history from our hometown is an experience I wish everyone was able to partake in.” Principal, Paul Mehlhorn has expressed an interest in the project becoming a purposeful part of the curriculum going forward where it happens each year.” Raegan Russell, of Berwick Academy adds “the Make History Project has been a thoughtful collaboration between my art students and the Sarah Orne Jewett House. Our students visited the historic home of Jewett, read excerpts of her writing and were invited to experience the space personally and authentically. They were given sketchbook prompts that encouraged them to find what resonated with them, and to discover what questions they had about Jewett, and her time. Our art students further explored these ideas in their sketchbooks, and ultimately through an expressive art work.” Seth Hurd’s Berwick Academy Chorus recorded a period piece of music in the historic house museum to create an audio installation to the exhibition. He is pleased to work on “projects like this one, which align perfectly with our student centered and project -based curriculum at Berwick Academy.”

Make History is on exhibit at the Sarah Orne Jewett Visitor Center until May 18, 2019, and at the Sarah Orne Jewett Museum Education Space until June 30, 2019. Hours are first and third Saturdays, through May, and Friday – Sunday, from June 1 – October 15, 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. For more information, please call Sarah Orne Jewett House Museum and Visitor Center, 207-384-2454, JewettHouse@historicnewengland.org. or visit the website www.historicnewengland.org. The project and exhibition wad funded in part by the Sam L. Cohen Foundation.

Sarah Orne Jewett House Museum and Visitor Center is one of 36 house museums owned and operated by Historic New England, the oldest, largest, and most comprehensive regional heritage organization in the country.