After over six months of renovations, the Jackson Homestead and Museum has reopened with a new exhibit celebrating Newton’s multicultural history.
The exhibit, “Newton: The City We Make,” reconstructed the entire first floor of the historic building as a space where visitors can not only learn about Newton’s history but envision themselves as a part of it.
The Homestead, built by Timothy Jackson in 1809, remained in the family for about 140 years before a descendant, Frances Middendorf, donated it to the city of Newton in 1949. Shortly after being built, the Homestead became known as a station on the Underground Railroad, a history the museum continues to honor and preserve.
The previous installation in the Homestead had been on the walls since the 1980s. While it told a story in its time, it was a narrow version of Newton’s past, one seen from a 19th century, white, affluent view, said Sara Lundberg, curator of Historic Newton, a partnership between the city and the Newton Historical Society that operates the homestead.
“It very sorely needed to be replaced,” Lundberg said.
Lisa Dady, Historic Newton’s director, said she was more understanding of the old installation. “I don’t want to diss my predecessors, or even me, for the first few years because it did serve a purpose,” she said.
The old exhibit consisted of foam board panels pinned to the wall, Dady said. For 40 years, the exhibit centered on a single era of Newton’s past—mostly following the history of white residents of Newton, Dady said. But she realized there was so much more to tell about Newton’s history.
The new exhibit is centered on three themes: “On This Land,” which shows how the city’s physical landscape has changed over time; “Making Newton Home,” which highlights the communities and immigrants who have lived and worked in Newton; and “Creating Change,” which emphasizes moments when residents advocated to shape the city, and country, they wanted to live in. Each of the three galleries features artifacts, photographs and replicas from residents with historical backgrounds rooted in Newton.
In “On This Land,” the gallery features an aerial image of the suburbanization of Newton, the Massachusetts Turnpike and the Black community that was decimated by its construction.
The overarching idea of the exhibit, Dady said, “is that Newton is shaped by the decisions of individual people in response to an array of forces.”
Rather than presenting the past as a continuum of events, the new gallery is there to emphasize the role of Newtonians and their decision-making. “The idea is that history doesn’t just happen to us,” Dady said. “It’s really the result of key moments of decision making and agency.”
Lundberg said her hope for the exhibit is for visitors to leave feeling like participants of those decisions—people who can shape Newton’s future just as others shaped its past.
Putting that vision into action meant being selective over curatorial choices. The exhibit doesn’t ignore any of the major themes in Newton’s history—it just approaches them through different stories, different objects and different people than the old exhibit did.
“It wasn’t a trade-off,” Dady said. “It’s the same history. It’s the same time and place. It’s just selecting a different vantage point.”
The “Making Newton Home” gallery highlights the city’s various identities as a community built from people who immigrated to the city. The exhibit features one section called “suitcase stories,” which tells the story of five ethnic groups with deep roots in Newton. For this section, Lundberg said, artifacts and photographs were donated by community members, while she had to track down others through careful research.
Lundberg and Dady, however, decided to leave three walls of the gallery unfinished. They plan to invite the community to help curate the remaining space with their own desires for what the space could be, a nod to the fact that the story of Newton is built upon its residents.
Mayor Marc Laredo praised the exhibit in a press release, saying it “helps us see how those varied perspectives form a shared civic story of our city.”
Throughout the exhibit, hands-on interactive elements, such as QR codes and puzzles, give visitors, 30% of whom come from outside Newton, ways to directly engage with the material, Dady said.
“With museum exhibits, you don’t want to overwhelm the visitors with too much,” Lundberg said. “You want to entice them to learn more later on.”
The museum is also committed to keeping the exhibit from going stale, Dady said.
One gallery corner will rotate its content monthly, and the community curation model in the immigration part of the gallery is designed to evolve over time. “We’re really trying to have it be more dynamic and not done and then there for 40 years,” Dady said.
“We hope—we think—that when people are here looking at the exhibit, they see themselves on that continuum of agency of someone that can shape Newton in the future,” Dady said.
****
This story is part of a partnership between the Newton Beacon and the Boston University Department of Journalism.