Past Exhibition Programs:

Re-vision: Art Works with History

Within the past two years, staff and trustees of the Rensselaer County Historical Society have crafted a new mission statement and long-range plan that focuses the museum's role on creating linkages between history and heritage and contemporary life through innovative collecting, interpretation and programming. The result has been an ongoing dialogue about how RCHS can make its collections and programs more relevant to and reflective of life in Rensselaer County, and more accessible to local residents.

RCHS has also embarked on a New York State Council on the Arts-funded 3-year collection management initiative, of which the second year is examining the scope of the permanent collections and their representation of life in the county over time. Historians and curators from museums with contemporary history collections are working with RCHS staff to develop a revised scope of collections statement that incorporates the new mission and long planning goals.

The purpose of this exhibition is to explore the way people can interpret objects, events and individuals in the recent or historical past. It challenges the notions that history has only one interpretation and, that once interpreted, our understanding of history cannot, or should not, be revised to reflect new information or points of view.

A history museum or historic house museum is often perceived by the public to be a relatively unchanging, and unchanged, place -- a place where one can go to learn truths about the past and be confident that these truths will never vary. This perception also speaks to the notion that certain people know and can interpret history (the truth) and that, for the rest of us, our experiences may have little or no bearing on the past or how we understand it.

To assist RCHS in challenging itself as a collector, presenter and interpreter of the past, and to assist the public in challenging their conceptions about what and who makes history, seven contemporary artists have been asked to develop new approaches to the museum's permanent collections and installations through the creation of site-specific works of art. The result will be an art exhibition that functions as a historical interpretation.

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