{"id":11842,"date":"2020-10-26T18:24:30","date_gmt":"2020-10-27T00:24:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11842"},"modified":"2020-10-26T18:24:30","modified_gmt":"2020-10-27T00:24:30","slug":"salem-museum-gives-in-exhibits-1692-witch-trial-materials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11842","title":{"rendered":"Salem Museum Gives In, Exhibits 1692 Witch-Trial Materials"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Samuel Sewall, a witch trial judge, painted by John Smibert (Peabody Essex Museum).<\/p><\/div>\n

In 2017, Donna Seger, a history professor at Salem State University (Massachusetts) wrote an open letter to the leadership of the Peabody Essex Museum,<\/a> a big, rich institution in downtown Salem that along with being a major art museum, controls (and usually hides) the town’s historical archives.<\/p>\n

Her letter stated,<\/p>\n

Please reconsider your decision to remove Salem\u2019s historical archives from Salem.<\/p>\n

I consider the Peabody Essex Museum to be an extraordinary asset to our city, fostering engagement, awareness, and edification. Furthermore, I understand that in order for it to flourish, it had to become greater than the sum of its two parts: the former Peabody Museum and Essex Institute. Yet those two institutions, the products of the fruits and labors of generations of Salem residents, created a foundation on which the PEM was built: a\u00a0strong<\/em> foundation that is acknowledged in the museum\u2019s mission statement, which asserts its 1799 foundation and status as \u201cAmerica\u2019s oldest continuously operating museum\u201d. There are no explicit references to history in this statement, but it is implicit everywhere, especially in the aim to\u00a0transform people\u2019s lives by broadening their perspectives, attitudes, and knowledge of themselves and the wider world.\u00a0<\/em>A key path towards self-knowledge and knowledge in general is historical understanding, which is grounded in historical archives full of\u00a0people<\/em> as well as papers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Shortly before that, the travel writer J. W. Ocker((Say it with a long O, like “oak-er”)) wrote in his highly entertaining book A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts<\/a>,\u00a0 <\/em>that the Peabody Essex, “the oldest continually operating museum in America,” was well, sort of embarassed by its local-history collection, including the surviving documents from the 1692 witch trials.<\/p>\n

“We don’t talk about Salem, we talk about the world,” the PEM’s chief marketing officer told Ocker. “The October [witchy] crowd, they don’t go to art museums.((I think that M. and I proved him wrong, although admittedly we did not visit in October<\/a>.)) . . . . We are a museum of art and culture, not a museum of social history.”((J. W. Ocker, i Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts<\/em> (New York: The Countryman Press, 2016), 78\u201379.))<\/p>\n

Somoone must have suffered a change of mind though, <\/strong>because the Peabody Essex is offering a new exhibit through April 4: “The Salem Witch Trials, 1692.<\/a>”<\/p>\n

Follow the links there and you will find more, such as a podcast on the trials’ legacy.<\/a><\/p>\n

Join [Dinah Cardin] and Chip Van Dyke, your hosts of the PEMcast<\/a>, as we go beyond the often-told story of the Salem witch trials to give you a deeper understanding of what happened. We\u2019ll explore what life was truly like in a 17th-century home, go to key sites around the city and even find ourselves on a hilltop in Maine. A selection of the largest collection of Salem witch trial documents goes on view at PEM on September 26, with the opening of The Salem Witch Trials 1692<\/em><\/a>. Visitors can also see, from PEM\u2019s collection, possessions related to the judges, and the 25 innocent people tragically died.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Watch it if you can’t visit the exhibit, and be glad that perhaps peace has been made between the high art-focused museum leadership and the events three hundred twenty-eight years ago that remain spirituall potent today.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2017, Donna Seger, a history professor at Salem State University (Massachusetts) wrote an open letter to the leadership of the Peabody Essex Museum, a big, rich institution in downtown Salem that along with being a major art museum, controls (and usually hides) the town’s historical archives. Her letter stated, Please reconsider your decision to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[103,387,325,158,29],"class_list":["post-11842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-massachusetts","tag-museums","tag-salem","tag-tourism","tag-witchcraft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-350","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9456,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9456","url_meta":{"origin":11842,"position":0},"title":"Witchy Cultural Tourists Do Exist","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 2, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"In J. W. Ocker\u2019s book A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts, Jay Finney, chief marketing officer of the big Peabody Essex Museum, tells Ocker that \u201ccultural tourists\u201d who visit the museum are a different crowd than those who come to Salem for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"art\"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/PEM-and-witchy-stuff.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/PEM-and-witchy-stuff.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/PEM-and-witchy-stuff.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/PEM-and-witchy-stuff.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9563,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9563","url_meta":{"origin":11842,"position":1},"title":"The “Salem-Santa Fe” Mystery Solved","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 31, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"A month ago I blogged how astonished M. and I were to see that Kakawa, the Santa Fe-based chocolate house, was about to open a new store in Salem, Mass. Imagine our surprise to see this storefront on Essex Street next to the [Peabody-Essex] museum: Kakawa is coming! Sure, I\u2019d\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"chocolate\"","block_context":{"text":"chocolate","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=chocolate"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/kakawa-santa-fe.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/kakawa-santa-fe.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/kakawa-santa-fe.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9439,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9439","url_meta":{"origin":11842,"position":2},"title":"Salem, Arkham, and H. P. Lovecraft","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 1, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"What Bourbon Street is to New Orleans' French Quarter, Essex Street is to Salem, Mass. When it's party time (October), this is where the party happens. Otherwise, it is the chief tourist-commercial street, whether you want the Peabody Essex Museum, Christian Day's witch shop,\u00a0or The Witch House, which was actually\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Massachusetts\"","block_context":{"text":"Massachusetts","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=massachusetts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/essex-st-west-vertical.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9349,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9349","url_meta":{"origin":11842,"position":3},"title":"The Southwest Follows Us to Salem & Salem Follows Us Home","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 25, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Before M. and I left on this trip, someone mentioned a Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit at the big Peabody Essex Museum in Salem. As it happened, the exhibit ended just before we arrived, but that's all right \u2014 we can visit a whole museum devoted to her painting in Santa Fe\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/georgia-okeefe.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/georgia-okeefe.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/georgia-okeefe.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9206,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9206","url_meta":{"origin":11842,"position":4},"title":"Witches, Sea Captains, and Art \u2014\u00a0We Go Back to Salem","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 4, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Last November, during the American Academy of Religion annual meeting in Boston, I made a quick trip to Salem, Mass., with some fellow Pagan studies scholars. It was only one afternoon\u2014long enough to visit some of the witchy shops, a magickal temple, the Charter Street\u00a0cemetery, and a few other sites.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/black-magic-rum-ocker-sm.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9514,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9514","url_meta":{"origin":11842,"position":5},"title":"Turning Dead Puritans into the Mighty Dead: Redefining Salem","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 16, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"The last time that I walked through the Salem witch trials memorial adjacent to the Charter Street cemetery, I saw that someone had left a rolled-up paper at John Proctor's memorial bench.((No one ever seems to sit on the benches, perhaps because they usually hold offerings of one sort or\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"libraries\"","block_context":{"text":"libraries","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=libraries"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/john-proctor-memorial-petition-sm.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11842"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11848,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11842\/revisions\/11848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}