Plymouth Rock Shards, FDR's Mic, And Hanging Chads: See The History Of America Through Small Objects. During America’s souvenir-hunting heyday, visitors to the White House used scissors to cut pieces of fabric from the president’s curtains.
Citizens turned up at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate with chisels and broke off marble chunks from the living room mantle. Tourists hammered away at Plymouth Rock and commemorated their visits by taking home shards of granite. "It seems crazy now," says historian William L. Bird. "People thought they were going to save the past by chipping away at it. Bird’s new book Souvenir Nation (Princeton Architectural Press) highlights three centuries’ worth of hand-harvested relics, keepsakes, and curios belonging to Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of American History collection.
Artifacts include a nut trinket gleaned from Washington’s backyard, Teddy Roosevelt’s can opener, John F. Most of these humble objects earn a place in the Americana pantheon by bearing mute witness to remarkable moments in time, explains Bird. Stories of money. Shell out for currency Currencies made from stone, feather, or shells, like this Kina shell from Papua New Guinea have performed an important social and cultural function, alongside their economic one in many parts of the world.
Today, this heritage is a source of pride for some countries, and traditional currencies often feature in the design of their national coins and banknotes. More about this object Theme: tradition and innovation See all objects in the Collection online. Whether Humble or Glorious: Telling Stories of Human History Through Objects. In “Stuff That Defines Us,” Carol Vogel writes: It was a project so audacious that it took 100 curators four years to complete it.
The goal: to tell the history of the world through 100 objects culled from the British Museum’s sprawling collections. The result of endless scholarly debates was unveiled, object by chronological object, on a BBC Radio 4 program in early 2010, narrated by Neil MacGregor, director of the museum. Millions of listeners tuned in to hear his colorful stories — so many listeners that the BBC, together with the British Museum, published a hit book of the series, “A History of the World in 100 Objects.” Here are some ways to use this idea, and the New York Times slide show and article about the project, in your own classroom. Before Viewing Tell students about the goal of the British Museum’s “History of the World in 100 Objects” project, perhaps using the excerpt from the Times article at the top of this post. Questions Activity Ideas People’s Choices Local Connections.
Object Monologues: Drama Strategies to Use With Any Day's Times (Part 4) Rich Addicks for The New York TimesLife-size images from an antique board game at the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody, Wyo.
Students might use objects like this to tell stories using our exercise, below. Go to related article » This is Drama Week on The Learning Network, and each day, with the help of the theater teacher David Kener, we’ve published new strategies that can be used across subject areas, and with content you can find in any day’s paper. Below, in Part Four: crafting and delivering monologues that recount the history of objects. Object Monologues Directions Students create and present a monologue (an extended speech spoken by one person usually addressed to someone, either the reader, spectators, or an imagined second character) as if from the point of view of an object they have read about in a newspaper article, work of literature or historical account.
Ask students: What would this object say if it could talk and wanted to tell us about its history? How Can I Use It? A History of New York in 50 Objects.