Ancestors and Other Kinfolk
Photographs by Rebecca Reid
Exhibit opening July 6th, 5 – 8 pm
Part of Amherst Arts Night Plus
at the Simeon Strong House
Rebecca Reid is a photographer who retired to become a farmer, but somehow can’t seem to stop working with photographs. She worked for many years as the staff photographer for the Hitchcock Center for the Environment in South Amherst, melding her two passions: the natural world and visual images. She is always looking for another way to strengthen people’s relationship to the environment, and this exhibit is another attempt. She lives with her husband, Michael Dover and a family of farm-mates on a small farm in Leverett.
I see human beings and the natural world as interrelated and interdependent and as having a long and complex historical relationship. We could not exist without these things. We evolved with them, and they support our lives, as do our own closer kin.
–Rebecca Reid
The Spectacular Mabel Loomis Todd
What do you know about Mabel Loomis Todd?
For the majority of those who know her name, she is primarily associated with Amherst as the editor of Emily Dickinson’s poems and letters and her long-term relationship with Emily’s brother Austin. While true to fact, these details miss the spirit of a woman intensely involved in this community from her arrival in 1881 until the Todds moved to Florida in 1917. Those who knew her remembered “her vividness, her love of beauty, her ceaseless activity and her joy in the things she did, what she was is undoubtedly more than anything she did,” recalled her daughter, Millicent Todd Bingham, in Mabel Loomis Todd: Her Contributions to the Town of Amherst, our guide for this exhibition.
This exhibit was created with the research and assistance of Dr. Julie Dobrow, author of the upcoming book Outside Emily’s Door: Mabel Loomis Todd, Millicent Todd Bingham and the Making of America’s Greatest Poet, and Emma John, Hampshire College intern.
This exhibit is now open at the Simeon Strong House.
Read more here.
The Value of Looking
Sweetser Family Portraits
Portraits are a window into the past. They not only give us information about the people in them, but they also tell us about the world in which these people lived. As both artistic objects and cultural artifacts, they shed light on the various social, aesthetic and economic elements that influenced their creation. Our collection includes two Sweetser Family portraits painted by H.R. Snyder in 1844 and a later portrait of Abby Sweetser by an unknown artist.
These portraits are the subject of recent research by Dr. Ian Cooke who curated this exhibit.
Read more here.
These are all entries under the letter “C” in the book Amherst A to Z, written by Elizabeth Sharpe. The book is illustrated with pictures of artifacts from the Amherst History Museum, historic images from the Jones Library’s Special Collections, as well as photographs of our town and the folks who live here.