MHS Fund Giving Circle members are invited to a festive evening with good food,fine wine, and lively conversation inspired by Dolley Madison. During dinner, MHS President Catherine Allgor, who is known for her published work on Dolley Madison, will provide history and fun facts about dining with Mrs. Madison. 

Dinner tickets are $100 per person. Please note that no tickets will be mailed; a master guest list will be at the door. 

Registration will open on 29 January.

This event is open only to MHS Fund Giving Circle Members. Join a Giving Circle today at www.masshist.org/support/mhsfund. 

The History and Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Tour is a 90-minute docent-led walk through our public rooms. The tour is free, open to the public, with no need for reservations. If you would like to bring a larger party (8 or more), please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

While you're here you will also have the opportunity to view our current exhibition: Yankees in the West.

This panel takes the opportunity to bring the fields of environmental and early American history into closer conversation. Environmental historians are concerned with concepts such as ecological imperialism and non-anthropocentric empires, built and natural environments, controlling and organizing space, and the relationship between borders and frontiers. How does or might this influence scholarship on early America? How can work on early American history enrich environmental historians’ understanding of empire, metropoles and borderlands, movement and colonization?

To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.

After being forced to flee Marblehead in May 1775, the Robie family joined fellow refugees in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In exile, each family member developed a unique perspective on his or her new home and outlook for the future. Repatriation further complicated these understandings and divided the family between two nations. This project explores how a family in exile struggled to maintain kinship networks while its members adapted to a new social environment.

The remarkable cultural history of the great Midwestern city of Chicago contains some exceptional modernist credentials. From the 1893 World’s Fair through mid-century, Chicago writers revolutionized literary forms during the first half of the 20th century, a period of sweeping aesthetic transformations all over the world. Olson’s enthralling study bridges the gap between two distinct and equally vital Chicago-based artistic “renaissance” moments: the primarily white renaissance of the early teens and the creative ferment of the “Black Metropolis” of Bronzeville.

The History and Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Tour is a 90-minute docent-led walk through our public rooms. The tour is free, open to the public, with no need for reservations. If you would like to bring a larger party (8 or more), please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

While you're here you will also have the opportunity to view our current exhibition: Yankees in the West.

Who decides what should be remembered in public spaces? Is removing a monument the equivalent of erasing history, or should monuments change along with their communities? Join MHS in exploring how monuments and memorials can help students understand history, historical memory, and how national symbols play a critical role in articulating culture and identity.

This program is open to all K-12 educators. Teachers can earn 22.5 PDPs or one graduate credit (for an additional fee).

Image: Dedication of the Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, Boston, 31 May 1897, albumen print.

Highlights:

• Explore WWII and Holocaust commemoration across the globe 
• Learn about the history of Confederate monuments in America: When were they erected? Who built them? What do they signify? 
• Discuss ways to engage students in conversation on current national debates over Confederate symbols in public spaces
• Take a tour of Reconstruction-era Boston Monuments

In 1948, inspired by changes to federal law, Massachusetts officials started to plan highways circling and cutting through the heart of Boston. But when officials began to hold hearings in 1960 the people pushed back. The story of how an unlikely multiracial coalition of urban and suburban residents, planners, and activists emerged to stop a highway is one full of suspenseful twists and surprises. And yet the victory and its aftermath are undeniable: federally funded mass transit expansion, a linear central city park, and a highway-less urban corridor that serves as a daily reminder of the power of citizen-led city-making and has had lasting national implications.

The U.S. Constitution is not a “social contract,” but a popularly issued corporate charter.  America’s constitutional innovations—constitutional conventions, written charters, judicial review, and charter amendment—represent a transfer of the governance mechanisms of corporations to the state.  Ciepley's current project examines the roots of this new mode of constitutionalism in New England’s corporate colonies.

On 24 March 2018 from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM, we invite the public to stop by 1154 Boylston Street in Boston to donate 2017 and 2018 Women’s March memorabilia—pink hats, signs, pins, t-shirts, photographs (prints or digital images)—as well as written accounts to its collection.

If you do not want to part with your Women’s March items, consider wearing them to the MHS and having your picture taken (a photographer will be on site) to be added to our collection. We also encourage written experiences and accounts of the marches to be shared. These can be e-mailed to collections@masshist.org or mailed to: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, MA, 02215, attention Brenda Lawson. Images can be donated online at www.masshist.org/womensmarch. 

If you are unable to come to the MHS on 24 March but have items you would like to donate, please contact Anne Bentley (abentley@masshist.org or 617-646-0508) or Brenda Lawson (blawson@masshist.org or 617-646-0502) to discuss.

Selected items collected on 24 March will be displayed as part of our 2019 exhibition on women’s suffrage.

Image: Catherine Allgor, 2017 Women's March

The History and Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Tour is a 90-minute docent-led walk through our public rooms. The tour is free, open to the public, with no need for reservations. If you would like to bring a larger party (8 or more), please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

While you're here you will also have the opportunity to view our current exhibition: Yankees in the West.

In 1909 and 1912, the Arizona legislature enacted requirements that all voters be literate in English, sparking a storm of multilingual protests in the papers and the courts. How and why Anglo-Arizonans took the right to vote from thousands of Mexican-American men and how Spanish-speakers fought back shows how conflicting views of race and ethnicity have influenced citizenship in the U.S.’s southwestern borderlands.

To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.

Nineteenth-century children rarely had access to money, even when they worked. Yet, several forms of authority instructed children in specific expectations of spending, saving, and giving. This talk explores how and why children were taught to interact with and value financial resources as well as how these lessons were racialized.

THIS PROGRAM IS SOLD OUT

PLEASE NOTE - PEOPLE WHO REGISTERED FOR THIS PROGRAM AFTER 3/15/18 MAY BE ASKED TO SIT IN OVERFLOW SEATING 
(The overflow seating is on the same floor, one room over with a live video feed)

Throughout American history many groups have struggled to establish their rights as citizens. While the United States was a grand experiment in republican government, in the beginning only a small percentage was allowed to participate. Over time, citizenship has grown, but this has often not been a simple or a smooth process. Join MHS for a panel discussion that will explore this history of citizenship and protest. How have groups throughout American history used agitation to help change the dialog about their position as citizens? How can this history help inform our views and reactions to the changing political climate we see today?

This program is made possible by a grant from Mass Humanities

The History and Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Tour is a 90-minute docent-led walk through our public rooms. The tour is free, open to the public, with no need for reservations. If you would like to bring a larger party (8 or more), please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

While you're here you will also have the opportunity to view our current exhibition: Yankees in the West.