Politically Speaking: ‘Reminding us of our humanity’
Politically Speaking: Episode 8
Subscribe to Politically Speaking!
Transcript
Richard Lovette
Welcome to Politically Speaking, an ETSU podcast about freedom and citizenship. Hosted by Dr. Daryl Carter, a professor and scholar of political history.
Each week, we dive into the essential topics of personal freedom and engaged citizenship, exploring what it means to be an active and responsible citizen in today's world.
Join us as we talk politics with members of the ETSU community, asking important questions and seeking meaningful answers.
Dr. Carter
I am with Rebecca Proffitt today on Politically Speaking.
She is the director of the Reece Museum.
Welcome.
Proffitt
Thank you for having me.
Dr. Carter
How long have you worked for ETSU?
Proffitt
Well, I have a very long history with ETSU.
I've been in my current position since 2021, and I started working at the Reece Museum in 2019 as the collections manager.
But before that, I was a graduate student in the Department of Appalachian Studies from 2015 to 2017.
And then way back in the 1900s, I got my undergraduate degree here from the music department.
Dr. Carter
Wonderful.
Well, thank you for joining us here today.
And, all that you do for the Reece Museum and for the university and, you know, that's a pretty big job.
Tell me what you do there and you know a little bit about the museum.
Proffitt
Sure.
Well, the Reece is culturally specific, so that means that we are looking at Appalachian culture, and we do that from a variety of perspectives and through a variety of different disciplines.
We're probably most well known for our exhibitions.
We have three rotating gallery spaces.
And then we have a Tennessee Music Pathways room.
So, any time you come to the museum, you might be able to see a brand new exhibit.
They are always changing.
We also have a permanent collection.
So we've been collecting material culture that represents the region since the late 20s.
Although the museum wasn't officially formed and dedicated until 1965.
So our collection dates back almost 100 years.
And then we have been doing a lot in the realm of community engagement.
So we're always making connections across campus and then out into our wider community.
And we're presenting educational programming and working with artists and cultural practitioners to bring programming and exciting events onto campus.
Dr. Carter
So what exactly is a collection?
Proffitt
Well, a collection can be anything that you desire to keep for different purposes.
So in the in the museum world, a collection is a grouping of objects that the museum cares for and keeps in perpetuity for the public good.
So in our case, we started in 1928 by asking Professor Maxine Matthews in the history department, ask her students to bring in objects that related to their family history.
So that's how our collection started.
And then, we built that into the Frontier Room exhibit, which was on display permanently from 1928 until 2007.
So a lot of people who have visited the museum in the in the more recent past, remember the covered wagon and the log cabin and the things that were in the basement of the museum.
And we also have an art collection.
So we've really developed a world class fine art collection since about the 1970s.
And then in 1984, we became part of the Center of Excellence for Appalachian Studies and Services, and that shifted our collecting to a more regional focus.
Dr. Carter
Awesome.
And you know, I can't help but note that the, founder you mentioned was, for the Department of History.
Well, the the history department is probably the best on campus.
I, I may be biased there.
But, in all seriousness, you know, the idea of historic preservation is very, very important.
And, and the regional focus on Appalachia is just absolutely wonderful.
And so I imagine that means that you may be collecting pottery one day, manuscripts the next, clothing to, maybe, you know, things such as blankets to maybe, you know, live recordings, or, you know, artwork, paintings, things of that nature.
So that is really awesome.
And, you know, when we think about Appalachia, there's a lot of stereotypes around them.
There are stereotypes that the people here are backward, or that they are monolithic, or that they are all dirt poor, and uneducated.
How does the museum engage the public to disabuse them of these kind of negative stereotypes about the region?
Proffitt
Well, that's an interesting place to start from.
I think that, maybe in older versions of Appalachian history and stories, we see a lot of those stereotypes.
But I'm hopeful that currently people have a broader conception of what it means to be Appalachian.
So, I guess for us, we don't really, specifically disabuse folks of ideas.
We instead want to just present a variety of ways of looking at different topics and just let that speak for itself.
So I think that, you know, coming to a fine art exhibit in the Appalachian Mountains, if you're able to let go of your preconceived notions of what that might look like, you'd be surprised.
You know, it presents a space where you can put yourself in someone else's shoes, develop empathy, you know, see the world from a new perspective.
So I think that just by presenting artworks, by Appalachian artists or telling historical stories from new perspectives, that we're just, hoping to open people's minds to what it means to be Appalachian.
Dr. Carter
Well, I like the way you say empathy.
Because that's something that, you know, education should be encouraging and everyone, right, is, a sense of caring for others and understanding of of people, in general are people that like you and understanding that everybody has, value.
On a side note.
Who who is Reece?
Is that an individual that somebody just come up with that name?
How how was the museum named?
Proffitt
The museum is named after a politician.
So Brazilla Carroll Reese is from or was from Butler, Tennessee.
So he was a local guy?
He lived in Johnson City, just up the road from here.
He was elected as a congressional representative in 1921.
He ran on a veterans platform.
He was very young, and he ran and served almost continuously until he died in office in 1961.
And Jimmy Quillin was his mentee and took over his, his spot after he passed.
And his his widow, Louise Goff, who had a lot of political connections and was a mover and shaker in the world in her own right, you know, not only alongside Reece but by herself as a woman was very influential.
And she put out a call to the community in East Tennessee and said she wanted to do
something to honor, be Carroll Reese's memory and legacy for all the work that he
did for the people of East Tennessee.
And there was a huge response from people, particularly from the Old Soldiers Home,
what we call the VA these days.
And so a lot of funding came in, and Louise Godfrey worked with, President Burgin Dossett at ETSU to establish the Reece Museum, which was formerly dedicated in 1965.
So people who know us and know our collection know that we have a lot of elephant statuary.
We have about 450 pieces of elephant statuary, because we have the political collections of both Carroll Reece and Jimmy Quillen at the museum.
And what do you get your Republican congressperson when you need a nice gift?
Dr. Carter
An elephant?
Proffitt
Yeah.
They collect elephants.
Yeah, they both collected elephants.
So that's something that we're kind of known for, people who are familiar with our collection.
Dr. Carter
Well, I've seen some of those collections over the years.
And I will tell, our listeners that you can see a replica of the former congressman's office in Sherrod library here on campus, on the fourth floor.
And so, that brings me to the next point.
You said community programming.
Do you partner with certain entities around the community?
Do you partner with academic departments a little or both?
How does that work and how can people get engaged with the Reece Museum?
Proffitt
Well, I think we do really well at connecting our community with our campus.
So we do a lot of work across academic and campus lines where we work with different departments to develop exhibitions or to facilitate research projects.
We have a couple of classes, that we work closely with.
So students who are learning about, religious history with Dr. Jennifer Adler or Appalachian art with Dr. Michael Fowler.
We've been working with them to include the collection in their class syllabus.
So we're trying to make the collection, accessible so that if you have a research project or if you want to do some study or some work with it, it's available to the public.
That's what it's there for.
And then we, we kind of use that as a foundation to develop, exhibitions and programming, where we hope that somebody will work with us to use their area of expertise to create an exhibit that then we can showcase for them.
So we develop, you know, a visual representation of what you might be writing and reading about that you can experience in the museum.
We do that with lots of people on campus.
And then, we have, for example, the Fletcher exhibit, and that's an international juried exhibition.
And we have community partners who co-direct tours of the exhibit, and they handle a lot of the, you know, getting submissions and getting artists interested in it.
And then we do the work of getting the work shipped here and hanging it on the walls and marketing it.
So there's a lot of ways that we interface with people who are interested in exhibiting or collecting.
Dr. Carter
Tell us a little bit more about the Fletcher exhibit.
Proffitt
Yeah, it's it's a socially and politically engaged art exhibition.
Dr. Carter
Now, are you telling people how to think?
Proffitt
Absolutely not.
We never want to tell people how to think or what to think.
We just want to show them the options.
We want them to think.
We want them to have an opportunity to see.
Well, this is a quote from Bell Hooks, whom I love.
And she says that, one of the powerful experiences of viewing art is that you can recognize the familiar in something unfamiliar, and that allows you to shift your thinking and shift your perspective and move your worldview into the future.
And it just really gives an opportunity for us to put ourselves in other people's shoes and see the world in a different way.
Dr. Carter
And then on the art just for a second, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention our friends over in Slocumb Galleries, in the Department of Art and Design, and that there's art and buildings all across the campus.
Some of it's from the president's collection, some of it's from, the Reece Museum, etc., and I would encourage our listeners to take a look whenever they have an opportunity.
But this issue of, the Fletcher Museum, excuse me, Fletcher exhibit, along with the Reece Museum and these issues around, politics and things of that nature.
Museums are often in this kind of crosshair, along with other institutions such as academic historians.
Politicians are contributing to federal agencies like the National Endowment for the Humanities or the National Endowment for the Arts.
So how do you deal with the political atmosphere in which everything is hotly contested and debated, especially public institutions, especially how we view history, how we view, the past and how we view each other.
How do you deal with that?
And in a thoughtful and meaningful way?
Proffitt
Well, I would say everything we do is intentional.
I mean, we come from a space of wanting to be, objective and of presenting fair and balanced information.
And I think that you can see that in, in the content that we produce and that we put out into the world, because we exist for everyone, we don't exist for a specific segment of the population.
We want to represent everybody in our community.
And I'm actually a folklorist.
I'm not a historian.
And so, I don't know, you know, if your listeners know much about folklore, but I like to think of it as being a subversive historian.
And that, to me just means that, my focus is on the personal stories of the people that are represented by the objects in the collection and in the exhibits.
And so when you get to a personal level, the politics at a national level don't really feel as important.
It feels more like we want to center our humanity, and we want to connect to one another on a very personal level.
And I think the museum does a really good job of reminding us of our humanity and reminding us that we're more alike than we are different.
Dr. Carter
I think that's so important because, you know, we are putting ourselves into, you know, these artificial constructs and groups, whether it's Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, something else in between that doesn't reflect the reality that we are human beings, we're Americans, and that we have similar needs.
Everybody needs love.
Everybody needs a home, their residence, education, a job, health care, all those kinds of things.
And so one of the things that I'm so proud of about the university is that we are engaging people and preparing them, yes, for the world, and also preparing them, to be good citizens and to engage people respectfully.
Civility is so important.
You just had, an interesting event, talking about different lifestyles.
And I've already heard some feedback that was very positive from that.
Can you tell us a little bit more?
I think it's a political science professor.
Proffitt
Yeah.
It was, Dr. Michael Bufano came in and presented, his work on Tunisia and culture groups and, believe he was talking about racial inequalities and, and ethnicities.
And he and I had a really good discussion after the presentation.
I found it fascinating.
And I always like to be reminded how even in other countries or in places that are really far away, you can still find similarities and you can still find things in common with, the issues and the struggles and the things that people are experiencing.
And, you know, he and I talked about, you know, does Appalachian identity qualify
as an ethnicity?
It was really interesting.
Dr. Carter
Yeah.
That's fascinating.
Proffitt
I think, the word Melungeon comes to mind, in part, and one of our very own, could talk a little bit about that up at the WETS radio station and that's, that's actually not a word that we would use anymore.
We actually say tri-racial, and there's a lot of research that supports that.
People who were inhabiting the region back in the early settlement days are very, very they were very racially integrated.
So there are Native Americans.
There were Africans who had recently been brought to the country, and then European settlers who had recently come, and they intermarried, quite freely.
There were a lot less restrictions on racial segregation back in those days.
From what I understand - I'm no expert in that area, though.
Dr. Carter
Well, Wayne Winkler does have some interesting thoughts on that and does wonderful work for us.
When you branch out from here, how do other museums, particularly those on university campuses, approach their work?
Are they similar?
Are they particularly focused on region?
A little bit of both.
How do other museums work?
Because there's a lot of museums out there.
Some are big, some are small, some seem more sketchy.
So what are best practices around museum work?
Proffitt
Well, that's a really big question.
We are actually accredited.
We have been accredited since by the American Alliance of Museums.
So we have very strict rules.
We have a whole lot of policy documents.
Things that we do are going to be very thoughtful because we have to satisfy our accreditation standards, and we also have to fit into the university's plan for us.
So it can be, those two things aren't really, they don't, like, cancel each other out or anything like that.
They generally support each other.
But there are, there's a lot of things to consider.
You know, when we're writing our policy or thinking about how to approach things.
Most academic museums have similar concerns.
There's, there's just a whole other way of functioning when you're part of a university campus.
As far as how other museums approach best practice, I can't really answer that.
I've - This is the only museum that I've actually worked at.
I've been at, historic sites and cultural institutions, and I was, in my previous life, I was a performance arts teacher.
So I have kind of a varied background when it comes to that.
Well, tell us just for a second - tell us a little bit about that.
Well, I lived in Washington, DC, for six years, and I taught at the at a public school in the Chevy Chase neighborhood, which is a, pretty well-to-do area.
And the school that I was that had a partnership with the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and I was able to do a lot of work.
I got graduate credit hours and professional development and all of that with the Kennedy Center, and we were an arts integration school.
So there was a lot of focus on how the arts supported, education and how you can learn, you can learn better when you have a chance to perform it or sing it or dance it, rather than just read it all.
Dr. Carter
I would agree with that.
I'm somebody who needs to do it in order to master it.
And, I can appreciate that.
It sounds to me like the museum really is thoughtful and engaged and both the community, but also with elevating civic mindedness, compassion and empathy, without taking sides on any particular issue other than what is factually true.
Can you talk a little bit more about some of the events you've had recently, that help in this space and what you have planning?
What you have planned for the upcoming year?
Proffitt
Sure.
Well, let me tell you about last semester a little bit.
We had an exhibit that we called Embodying Culture: Women in Appalachia.
And we created the space so that there was a visual arts exhibition on the wall, and there was a stage which was meant to literally elevate women and women's voices.
And then we created it to be a third space.
So a space where people could just come and relax and visit and hang out.
And with the art, there was a community art installation that people could participate in.
People would come in and read their books and just kind of be in the space.
But as part of the stage, we opened the space to our campus and, and regional community and said, you know, here is an opportunity if you have something you want to share and you want to give to your community through performance, let us know.
And we were overwhelmed with the number of people who wanted to come in and hold things like concerts or poetry readings or gatherings where music was played.
There was demonstration of craft workshops, space.
All kinds of things were held in the space.
And it really showed us that, if you open the door and make a comfortable place where people feel safe and welcome, that they will come in and share all kinds of unexpected things.
And it was really beautiful.
It was very community building, which I think is at the heart of a lot of what we do with our events.
So that was kind of an experiment that we did last semester.
And then we have all kinds of receptions.
So whenever a new exhibit opens, we typically invite the public to come have refreshments, meet the curator or meet the artists and, visit in the space.
And we've got several, receptions coming up.
The Fletcher juror will be doing a public talk.
The, Thursday, I believe it's November 7th is the first Thursday in November, and we'll be having a reception that evening.
And then throughout the semester, we host lectures and we host classes.
So, for example, like Dr. Bufano coming in and hosting a lecture, and you've organized some lectures in the space.
So, the best way to find out what's going on is to just look on our website and we have a couple tabs on the website where you can find current and upcoming exhibitions.
You can find events, you can go on to our collections portal and sort of look through some of the, collections objects that we've gotten uploaded on to our online catalog.
We're currently at about 13%.
So that's an ongoing project.
It'll be years before the whole catalog is available.
So check back because there's always something new there.
And our social media is another way that we, hope that people can engage and find out what kinds of events they can come and experience at the museum.
Dr. Carter
Oh, that's wonderful.
Do you have volunteers that sometimes come in?
Is that something that's possible?
Proffitt
Yeah, absolutely.
We have really tried over the last couple of years to create avenues for engagement.
So if you want to volunteer, if you're a student, we have an organization called Saber, which stands for the Student Advisory Board Reece.
It's our book club and you can join, and that's where we source our volunteers from.
And that's growing into a really active and engaged group of students.
And if you're interested in museum work or if you want to learn some skills that are applicable in the museum profession, that's a really good place to start.
We also employ a lot of students.
We have federal work-study, we have APS, we've got graduate assistants, we have a tuition scholar.
So we try to make sure that if you want to participate, we have a space for you to do that.
Dr. Carter
One last question: Do you, what one nugget, about the museum that you particularly are fond of, that maybe the public is not fully aware of that, that we could draw them in with?
Diddley the possum.
Diddley the possum is my answer.
Proffitt
Oh, well.
Okay, tell us a little more.
We have a collection that came into the museum in 1970, and it came from Nat Winston.
Nat Winston graduated from ETSU in 1955 from the psychology department.
He's considered the first psychologist to practice in East Tennessee.
And he's also credited with curing Johnny Cash of his addiction in the 1960s.
So he's a character.
And now the Taylor family is a really important family in East Tennessee's history.
When you drive up the four-lane to Elizabethton and you see that big white mansion called Sabine Hill that they've recently restored, that's the Taylor family home.
So he's connected to that history, and he gave us a very large collection, like probably 300 objects in 1970.
And one of the things that he gave us is a taxidermied possum that is playing the stand-up bass, a stand-up fiddle, and it's a student favorite.
And one of our student workers named him Diddley.
And so when you walk by the museum and we have all of our signage out, you'll see a big five-foot-tall possum on our front porch.
And that's Diddley, who's our unofficial mascot.
And we have stickers.
We have postcards of him.
He's got a fine art photograph that we had done of him.
So we love him.
Well, full disclosure, I have one of those stickers in my office, so that is marvelous.
Well, thank you.
We have a student worker who recently got a tattoo of Diddley.
Dr. Carter
That must be put on social media right away.
Well, and thank you so much for joining us today.
Proffitt
Thank you, for all that you do for the institution and, for our audience.
Dr. Carter
You know, we've been talking to a variety of people, and, we've been listening about politics, listening about civility, collegiality, how we get along.
But it's the essential skills and it is the humanities in no small part that help make us human.
And there's no better place to see that than the Reece Museum.
And we would encourage you to go there, look them up online, talk to them.
Come, you know, by any time during business hours and take a look at what they have.
And it gives us a whole different perspective on politics, including the ability for individuals to engage in empowerment by telling their own story in a realistic and honest way.
That gives them real agency.
And so it's not always about the political party, but it's the way in which we see ourselves represented.
And, the Reece Museum does a great job with engaging the community and people in that process.
So, Rebecca, thank you for speaking politically.
Proffitt
Thank you so much.
Dr. Carter
Thank you for joining us on this episode of "Politically Speaking" an ETSU podcast about freedom and citizenship. We hope you enjoyed our discussion and found it thought provoking.
Before we wrap up, we want to remind you about ETSU Votes, an initiative led by the office of Leadership and Civic Engagement at ETSU. ETSU Votes is dedicated to fostering active citizenship by providing resources and support for voter registration, engagement and education.
Last year, ETSU was honored by Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett for our outstanding efforts to promote voter registration. Remember, your voice matters, and participating in the electoral process is a powerful way to make it heard.
To learn more about ETSU Votes and how you can get involved, visit etsu.edu/votes. Thank you for listening.
Be sure to tune in to our next episode as we continue to explore the crucial concepts and topics of personal freedom and engage citizenship. Until then, stay informed, stay engaged, and keep speaking politically.
###
East Tennessee State University was founded in 1911 with a singular mission: to improve the quality of life for people in the region and beyond. Through its world-class health sciences programs and interprofessional approach to health care education, ETSU is a highly respected leader in rural health research and practices. The university also boasts nationally ranked programs in the arts, technology, computing, and media studies. ETSU serves approximately 14,000 students each year and is ranked among the top 10 percent of colleges in the nation for students graduating with the least amount of debt.
Stay in Touch
Follow ETSU on Social