CTExplored/Inbox
Welcome to your free bi-weekly newsletter from Connecticut Explored with the latest stories, the newest Grating the Nutmeg podcast, programs and exhibitions from our partners to see/watch this month, and more!
Congratulations to our CLHO Awards of Merit honorees!
We are excited to announce Elizabeth Normen, Connecticut Explored’s Founding Publisher, and our podcast, Grating the Nutmeg are being honored with Awards of Merit from the Connecticut League of History Organizations. The awards recognize institutions and individuals who demonstrate the highest professional standards and who enhance and further the understanding of history in Connecticut.
Sponsored Post
Register here: www.litchfieldhistoricalsociety.org/calendar
Shade: Labor Diasporas, Tobacco, Mobility and Urbanization
It’s April now, and the season for tobacco farming has begun. The people working on these farms, however, are often left out of the story of Connecticut. This invisibility is one of the many themes explored in Shade: Labor Diasporas, Tobacco, Mobility, and Urbanization. In this forthcoming exhibition, Connecticut-based historians and curators, Dr. Fiona Vernal, Dr. Jason Oliver Chang, and Elena Marie Rosario, draw on their expertise in African American, Puerto Rican, and Asian and Asian American Studies to tell the story of how shade tobacco has shaped the lives and communities tied to this industry.
In the Spring issue, Dr. Vernal reminds readers that the Connecticut River Valley is intertwined with the global economy. “Despite these global connections,” she writes, “New England in general, and the Connecticut Valley in particular, has often been characterized as a white parochial and culturally static place, perspectives countered by a diverse and interdisciplinary scholarship from history, architecture, and museum studies. These include the scholarship of Jean Stubbs, James F. O’Gorman, and Brianna Dunlap. Casting Connecticut as “the land of steady habits” elides some of the histories of migration that brought people from all over the world to work.”
The Spring issue’s theme is “The Power of Place.” Dr. Vernal makes it clear Connecticut River Valley is a place that cannot be understood without analyzing the shade tobacco industry operating on these farmlands. Shade is a new exhibition set to open in June 2023 at the Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library.
Read the entire story with your print subscription. (Subscribe at CTExplored.org/Subscribe.)
Or, subscribe to CTExplored/Inbox PREMIUM to read full texts of stories online only, just $30/year.
Game Changer: Topsy in the Tropics
Over the course of 20 years, Game Changer Pablo Delano, a visual artist, photographer and educator, amassed a substantial archive of artifacts related to a century of Puerto Rican history. Using this material, including three-dimensional objects, newspaper clippings, and photographs, he created The Museum of the Old Colony, a dynamic, site-specific art installation that examines the complex and fraught history of U.S. colonialism, paternalism, and exploitation in Puerto Rico. The work is also deeply personal, a means for Delano to better understand and come to terms with the troubling history of Puerto Rico.
In this Spring issue article, Delano discusses his inspiration for this exhibition. He writes,
The artwork is intended not only to expose and denounce U.S. colonial rule in Puerto Rico but also to evoke the complicity of museums in serving the cause of empire. There is an ironic twist to the title The Museum of the Old Colony: “Old Colony” refers not only to the colony itself but to a popular brand of soft drink originating in the southern U.S. during the mid-20th century but now manufactured and sold exclusively in Puerto Rico.
In the end, he says, the work liberates the story of a people from the limitations and blind spots of history, traditional museums, and popular culture.
Our Game Changer stories can be accessed for free! Read the story in full at ctexplored.org.
Sponsored Post
The Latest From Grating the Nutmeg
Picturing Puerto Rico in Conceptual Art: The Museum of the Old Colony by Pablo Delano
Connecticut and Puerto Rico have strong ties. The guest for this episode is Pablo Delano, a visual artist, photographer, and educator recognized for his use of Connecticut and Puerto Rican history in his work, including his 2020 book of photography Hartford Seen, a Connecticut Book Award 2021 “Spirit of Connecticut” finalist. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, he is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Fine Arts at Trinity College in Hartford. This conversation is a perfect companion to the Spring issue article linked above.
Listen: Picturing Puerto Rico in Conceptual Art: The Museum of the Old Colony by Pablo Delano
Support CT History podcast Grating the Nutmeg
We’re putting all the Grating the Nutmeg episodes into the Connecticut Digital Archive to preserve them for posterity. Help us with a donation if you can.
Programs and Exhibitions to Enjoy This Month
History and Hops- History of Irish in Waterbury
April 15 | 2-3 PM| Blackstone Irish Pub
Join Janet Maher, author of Waterbury Irish: From the Emerald Isle to the Brass City, to hear about her research and the journey this book took her on. Join The MATT at Blackstone Irish Pub for this special afternoon.
Price: $10. Register at MattMuseum.com
Sunday Jazz Concert
April 23 | 3 p.m.| Center Church (675 Main St. Hartford, CT)
Join Hartford Public Library for their popular Baby Grand Jazz series, offsite at Center Church. This month, listen to Baltimore based pianist and award-winning composer, Blackman Murray Russo. He and his various groups have performed at Blues Alley, the Kennedy Center, and many festivals and venues from San Francisco to New York.
Seating will be first come, first seated, starting at 2 p.m. No registration is required. Concerts will continue to be streamed on Hartford Public Library's Facebook Page and YouTube channel.
Historic Walking Tour
Seeing is Revealing: Nook Farm Then and Now is an innovative new walking tour, created by the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. Explore the Nook Farm neighborhood, an 1800s community of intellectuals, political leaders, authors, and scholars who influenced the country’s intellectual and social development. In person tours every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at 3 pm. A minimum of four (4) people for an in person guided tour is required. If the minimum is not met, participants will be provided the self-guided audio tour.
Cost: $0 for Hartford residents and children under 6; $15 for guided and self-guided audio tour
Reserve tickets at stowecenter.org.
Editor’s Picks
“Tobacco Valley: Puerto Rican Farm Workers in Connecticut, ”Connecticut Explored, Fall 2002.
“Visually Breathtaking Hartford Explored,” Connecticut Explored, Summer 2021.
Connecticut Seen: The Photography of Jack and Pablo Delano, Grating the Nutmeg
Help Endow Connecticut Explored through Endow Hartford 21!
Thanks to the vision and leadership of the Zachs Family Foundation and the other matching donors, we have an opportunity like no other to begin that journey. We hope you will join us.
WHY IS ENDOWMENT IMPORTANT?
Organizations need endowments to secure their future. An endowment creates a long-term resource that helps them sustain their missions during periods of revenue fluctuations.
MAKE YOUR ENDOWMENT GIFT
Any gift between $250 to $10,000 to Connecticut Explored will be matched 1:2 by Endow Hartford 21. For example, a gift of $1,000 will yield a $500 match.
If Connecticut Explored secures a minimum of $5,000 in NEW GIFTS to our EH21 fund in the month of APRIL we will receive a $1,000 BONUS GIFT deposited into our EH21 fund!
Gifts of ANY AMOUNT up to $5,000 to our organization received during the month of April will be counted towards our minimum $5,000 needed to trigger the Bonus Gift.
CLICK HERE TO DONATE ONLINE TOWARDS OUR ENDOW HARTFORD 21 FUND
If you prefer to send a check towards the endowment, matching funds are still available. Just follow the instructions here. Don’t forget to put “CT Explored” in the memo!
Join us—Two Options, Your Choice!
To Your Mailbox
The quarterly magazine in print: CTExplored.org/subscribe
To Your Inbox
Just enough, not too much. The entire issue bit by bit every two weeks to your inbox or the Substack app: full text of one or two stories from the latest issue, the latest Grating the Nutmeg and more! Want to read the whole issue at your convenience? Your premium subscription gives you online access to the entire issue!
CTExplored/Inbox Premium To receive new posts and get access to the online magazine, consider becoming a paid subscriber. $30 per year.