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10/06/2023 04:40 PMESSEX
The Connecticut River Museum is kicking off its 50th anniversary of sharing millennia of aquatic and nautical history by offering new additions and features for its visitors and mission this month.
Executive Director Elizabeth Kaeser said that celebrating the museum’s milestone anniversary is a way to look back 12,000 years of history along the Connecticut River, from Indigenous people of the Americas, to early European settlements starting with the Dutch, and then to the English through 19th-century industry. It is also about carrying on the work of the museum’s founding director, Brenda Milkofsky, as well as considering the future of the river.
“What is our role in that story today?” said Kaeser said in regards to what the museum is asking. “I think that as we look forward, we want to celebrate all that we have done over the past 50 years building from what Brenda started, and then we want to make sure that we are imagining the role that we all have in the Connecticut River story...We are all part of this river’s story, and it is incumbent on the Connecticut River Museum, which is the only museum that tells the story of the full length of the Connecticut River, to inspire people to feel a connection to this river and to see themselves as stewards for the river.”
The museum will officially kick off its semicentennial with the Brenda Milkofsky Curatorial Fund Dinner on Thursday, Oct 12 at Old Lyme Country Club. At that dinner, a new addition to the museum’s art collection will be revealed: a history piece by Len Tantillo depicting nautical activity by Dutch settlers of the Fort of Good Hope, which museum curator Amy Trout referred to as “one of the most substantial buildings of that century that was in the Connecticut River.” The painting will sit in the On the Great River exhibit located to the right of the welcoming desk on the first floor of the museum.
Not much remains of the 17th-century Dutch settlement in Hartford that predates English colonization, but commissioning Tantillo to create “a real historical justification for a painting” of the settlement speaks to the importance of preserving and telling stories of all kinds of human activity along the river.
“It’ll be a real coup for museums on the Connecticut River. Finally, there’s some sort of visual representation of what this significant, important structure was,” said Trout. “It helps everybody to sort of get an idea of what it would look [like] in the 17th century.”
Also celebrating its anniversary this year is the annual Holiday Train Show, which will see its 30th year with artist and model train enthusiast Steve Cryan on the museum’s third floor. The show will run from Nov. 21 through February 2024, featuring a river scene and 30 feet of model trains.
Occurring adjacent to the museum’s semicentennial is the launch of a new pilot program that will teach students about birding. The goal of the program is to teach students how to be “citizen scientists” who study the activity of birds in order to better understand the health of the Connecticut River and the surrounding communities, according to Kaeser.
Kaeser said the program is primarily geared toward Title I schools, such as those in Middletown or Hartford, but the goal is to make it a regular offering at the museum, so that students from the tri-town area can also participate.
“I think that the idea of birding and citizen scientist sort of development is really aligned with the museum’s strategic plan, which is to encourage young people to have positive feelings about the river, to connect with the river, and to become river stewards,” Kaeser said.
On Saturday, Oct. 14, from 9 to 10 a.m., the museum is hosting its sensory-friendly hours visitors bloc. Occurring before its regular opening hours, this is an opportunity for museum-goers of all abilities to have a lower-intensity experience of what the institution has to offer without being overwhelmed by too many people and excessive audio and visual stimulation. Reservations can be accessed on the museum’s website at ctrivermuseum.org.
Whether by offering these types of accommodations for all abilities, offering programs to study bird activity, or telling stories of extinct settlements along the 410-mile waterway, the mission of the Connecticut River Museum to educate its visitors on the regional significance of its namesake still stands through its offerings now having reached 50 years in Essex.
“I do think that the Connecticut River is sort of the backbone of New England, and that there is something about the story of the river that is a microcosm of what happened in New England everywhere else,” said Kaeser. “You have your kind of mountainous zones, you have your logging, you have sheep, you have manufacturing production, you have shipbuilding, and all the parts of New England along one body of water.”