Assignment Two

Four Centuries of Massachusetts Furniture

http://www.fourcenturies.org/

Four Centuries of Massachusetts Furniture is a collaborative product put together by eleven Massachusetts institutions, including the Massachusetts Historical Society, the MFA, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Winterhur Library. The purpose of the collaboration was to bring together these cultural institutions and create exhibitions and events related to 400 years of Massachusetts furniture creation and history. The collaborative project, which took place between March 2013 and December 2014, was partly sparked off by the discovery of three previously unknown business ledgers by Nathaniel Gould, and partly sparked off by the long history of Massachusetts and its renown as a hub of colonial furnituremakers. The collaboration appears to have been a success, and the website of the project remains up as a testament.

The Project

One potential complication that could have arisen from this collaboration is the sheer number of institutions working together. While all eleven institutions involved in the furniture project were similar in materials covered, they were all different, both in type and focus. This was a project of archives, historical societies, and libraries from across the state, focusing on one specific yet broad topic: Massachusetts furniture.

The eleven cultural institutions came together, donating pieces from their collections as well as information, and exhibitions were shown at those institutions, making knowledge and a chance to see rare and unique pieces open to the public. The project included three symposiums, seven exhibitions, two books, and the online database that is still open and accessible today. The exhibitions took place at different participating cultural institutions, including the Mass Historical Society, Old Sturbridge Village, and the Concord Museum.

While I was unable to find a great deal of information about the exhibitions themselves, or the symposiums, the project website is still active and provides a good example of what those exhibitions likely contained. The contains an interactive timeline, breaking down the 400 years covered in the project by providing an overview of different time periods and examples of furniture being made in state at that time. Furniture highlights provides examples of specific pieces of furniture, and details information about their maker, when they were made, and what cultural institutuin provided the furniture for the exhibition. Here is, I think, one of the better places to show that this was a successful collaboration; each of the eleven institutions involved in the project have furniture represented in the interactive timeline and in the highlights, and while some do have more furniture represented than others, nobody is excluded. A video library is also included on the site, and the videos are well made and informative (and again, come from different contributors are well represented here).Additional links are provided to other related institutions that may not have been directly involved in the project, but that have materials related to what was shown as part of the project, and the bibliography, while necessarily selective due to size, is a useful research tool for those wishing to learn more, as it includes resources used, abbreviations, and again, other institutes that contributed indirectly.

So is the project a successful one? Without having actually seen any of the exhibitions that were presented while the project was active, I believe that yes, it was. Having eleven different cultural institutions come together and contribute to what was likely a large and daunting project likely posed its own set of challenges, and the website that is up is still an invaluable research tool for those interested in the topic of furniture from Massachusetts, colonial or otherwise. Though the site is no longer updated, this fact is made clear to viewers. I think that, if the exhibitions and symposiums were anything like the site that remains active, this was indeed a successful collaboration. Though, this may also be partly due to the fact that the institutions involved had likely had smaller collaborations with each other in the past, and there is like an overlap in materials covered by these institutions. Still, that shouldn't detract from the fact that this was a successful collaboration with a lasting home on the web to showcase the effort that went into the union of eleven different cultural heritage sites.

Additional information related to the Four Centuries of Massacusetts Furniture project can be found here:

- http://www.afanews.com/articles/item/2231-the-cabinetmaker-and-the-carver-boston-furniture-from-private-collections#.VsqC2fkrLIU

- http://news.wgbh.org/post/four-centuries-massachusetts-furniture-unprecedented-collection

- http://www.afanews.com/articles/item/2227-made-in-massachusetts-studio-furniture-of-the-bay-state#.VsqC4fkrLIU

- http://www.fourcenturies.org/resources/bibliography/?all=1

- http://www.fourcenturies.org/about/press/

- http://www.fourcenturies.org/about/