Add To Calendar
Share Nestled in the heart of Connecticut's largest historic district, the Webb Deane Stevens Museum's three historic houses tell important stories of national and statewide significance.
Find more Webb Deane Stevens Museum Events
Description
Other People's Stuff with Brenton Grom
Thu, Sep 12, 2024 6:30-8:00 PM
You don’t have to believe the country is falling apart to notice Americans struggling to come together. Last year the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory report on our "epidemic of loneliness," a dark flip side to the loud and impassioned public dialogue that has become a hallmark of 21st-century life. Meanwhile, we give less than ever to charity, belong to fewer organizations, and distance ourselves from the categories and etiquette that once defined individuals’ relationships to a larger community. We want to be seen and heard, and yet we sometimes lack the tools and patience to see and hear one another.
From the neuroscience of spatial experience to the awe inspired by thinking across expanses of time, house museums hold powerful means to opening our minds. If we treat them as laboratories rather than as repositories of information, they can teach us to look closely at the residue of the past and use multiple kinds of intelligence to grasp the complexity of the human relationships intertwined with it. A century ago, old rooms and their furnishings were part of a bold new strategy in museums to lift up society by drawing attention to the objects that surround us. This lecture, adapted from an address last winter at the Colonial Williamsburg Antiques Forum, focuses on the ways in which our national treasures in Historic Wethersfield can help us observe, listen, and relate to one another with the same curiosity and respect we accord to people of the past.
About the speaker:
Brenton Grom was appointed Executive Director of the Webb Deane Stevens Museum in Old Wethersfield, Connecticut, in 2023. From 2018 to 2023, he served the Delaware Historical Society as Director of the George Read II House & Gardens in Old New Castle, Delaware, where he initiated a comprehensive overhaul of its interpretation and brand identity and delivered a community-driven master plan for its landscape. Prior to that, he was Curator of Special Collections in the Society’s research library and founded its Harry N. Baetjer III Junior Fellows Program, a summer internship and seminar for exceptional high school students of wide-rangin backgrounds and interests.
Mr. Grom also serves on the boards of the Delaware Center for Horticulture, Wilmington Concert Opera, and Fine Objects Society, is a past co-chair of the #MILLSUMMIT leadership conference, and has moderated national museum conference sessions on resolving generational bias and integrating facilities planning with interpretive strategy. He studied piano and musicology at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and Case Western Reserve University, and American history and material culture at the University of Delaware, investigating the relationship between manuscript culture, print culture, and collective memory in early American sacred music. He has held research fellowships at numerous institutions including the American Antiquarian Society, Library of Congress, University of Michigan, and Historic Deerfield.
Other People's Stuff is part of Tools for Coming Together, a larger series made possible by CT Humanities that uses Wethersfield’s colonial history to help people see and empathize with one another as we approach America’s 250th anniversary.
Date & Time
Thu, Sep 12, 2024 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM
Venue Details
Webb Deane Stevens Museum
211 Main StreetWethersfield, Connecticut 06109
