Summer Night: Paper Casting with Susan Grabel

Summer Night – Plarn Textiles with Antonia Perez

Panel Discussion: Perspectives on the Suffrage Centennial

Super Science: Plants and Pollinators

Summer Night – Hapa-Zome Natural Dye Printing with Sajata Epps

Moth Night!

Family Art Workshop: Exotic Insect Collage

Super Science: Weather!

Moth Night

Moth Night
Saturday, July 18
Free – Donations welcome
Stay up late and celebrate National Moth Week! Demystify the nocturnal world of science right from your windowsill or backyard with this downloadable kit of night science activities. Learn how to make your own attractor to study moths and insects, how to decipher owl calls and other night sounds, and more! Take a (virtual) closer look at the unique moths in our collection and express your love for nighttime nature with art activities. Presented in collaboration with the Staten Island Children’s Museum.

Registration coming soon!

Family Art Workshop: Puppet Theatre

Family Art Workshops

Statement of Solidarity

June 4, 2020

Dear Staten Island Museum Community,

We are writing to you today as museum leadership, on behalf of all of us at the Staten Island Museum.

In the midst of the already difficult circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, our country has been confronted by further trauma. Like you, we are sickened by the extreme and unwarranted violence against members of the Black community and hear the pain, suffering, and anger that has resulted.

We cannot just go about our days.

We mourn the loss of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and many others, all too reminiscent of Eric Garner in our own community six years go.

The Staten Island Museum stands in solidarity with the Black community – including our visitors, members, staff, trustees, interns, volunteers, and partners – in the continuing fight against racial injustice.

Over the past two years, the Staten Island Museum has undertaken the process of exploring our own implicit biases, delving into understanding of systemic racism, and identifying ways in which our thoughts and actions can help promote equity.

We are going to have to work harder and be stronger.

We are compelled to push forward and do the hard work toward dismantling systemic racism through self-examination, humility, sincerity, fortitude, and actions. As an institution, we will approach this effort holistically and hold ourselves accountable to this promise.

We are listening. We are committed to pushing for change in our institution and our community.

Respectfully,

Census 2020

The 2020 Census is now underway—respond online or by phone at (844-330-2020).

Fill out the census because you count, our community counts, culture counts!

The Census is a count of every person in the United States, and takes place every 10 years. The Census determines federal funding for education, healthcare, public housing, parks, and culture, as well as our number of representatives in Congress. It’s essential that every New Yorker is counted, and our voices are heard.

• The count of each New Yorker represents $3,000 in federal funding each year, and our fair share of over $650 billion is at stake.
• If we are undercounted, our community could lose seats in Congress, which means less of our voice in Washington on decisions that affect our future.
• In the 2010 Census, the response rate in NYC was only 62%, while the national average was 76%. We lost vital federal funding—we can't let that happen again.
• The Census is safe and secure—it will not ask for the following information: social security number, political beliefs, immigration status, or financial information.
• All information you share is kept confidential and protected by law.

 

 

NY International Children’s Film Festival

NY International Children’s Film Festival PJ Party

NY International Children’s Film Festival PJ Party

NY International Children’s Film Festival PJ Party

Grab some popcorn and get ready for a fun, artful film experience for kids and adults alike. With these hour-long screenings of the best of the New York International Children's Film Festival's short films, you can bring some artful, inspired storytelling and hilarity to your home screen. Two short film programs are available, Kid Flicks One recommended for ages 3+, and Kid Flicks Two for ages 8+. Have a great film experience with your kids, with plenty of ideas and themes to talk about long after the screening is done (and you'll have 48 hours to rewatch as much as you'd like!).

 

NYICFF Kid Flicks Trailer 2019/20 from NY Int'l Children's Film Fest on Vimeo.

 

Showing May 8th – 17th in our Virtual Screening Room!

PROGRAM 1 - Kid Flicks 1
(Click here for the list of shorts and descriptions)

PROGRAM 2 - Kid Flicks 2
(Click here for the list of shorts and descriptions)

$6.99 per program!  Once you rent them you have 48 to watch repeatedly!

NYICFF Kid Flicks One (Encore*) - Catch the best short films from around the world! (Ages 3+)
56 mins, In English, or with no dialogue

The New York International Children’s Film Festival brings you a great opportunity to share the art of film with kids, with this program filled with fun and clever stories of growth and transformation.

If you’ve ever been the youngest of the group, you’ll sympathize with the little tadpole who always falls a tad behind in the charming KUAP. Catching up on penmanship is the name of the game if you want to graduate from pencils in the winning doc Pen Licence. Then little ones are in charge and grown-ups get to play when the hilarious Flipped reworks the script.

With films from 10 countries, these shorts are sure to delight and inspire. 

*Kid Flicks 1 was presented at the Staten Island Museum this past October. 

Click here to vote on your favorite films from Kid Flicks One!

NYICFF Kid Flicks Two - Catch the best short films from around the world! (Ages 8+)
72 mins, In English or with English subtitles

These short films from the New York International Children’s Film Festival show that playfulness, big ideas, and feelings small and large are all just fine! With these great films for slightly older kids, you’ll have plenty of inspiration to continue the conversation with your kids long after the screening is done.

Take a wild ride and harness the (cat) power of the cosmos with the quirky film Catmos. If you're curious about more earthly matters, take a page out of a Field Guide to Being a 12-Year-Old Girl. And whether their tastes lean umami or sweet, the duo in Mogu & Perol just might convince you there is simply nothing more delish than a warm friendship.

For great films for kids ready to grow in experiences and ideas, NYICFF’s Kid Flicks Two is just the ticket!

Click here to vote on your favorite films from Kid Flicks Two! 

 

 

FAQs: https://nyicff.org/virtual-cinema-faq/ 

Family Art Workshop: Paper Quilling

Earth Day How-To Festival

Family Night Out: PJ Party!

Explore the Exhibition

This page is in formation ... please check back soon for a more complete exhibition experience. 

Photos by Christine Cruz (unless otherwise noted)

 

Photo by Rylee Eterginoso (above)

 

 

Poet Laureate Presents: Women’s Right to Vote

Family Art Workshop: Bird Feeders

Panel Discussion: Perspectives on the Suffrage Centennial

Vote

Introduction

Empowered by state and federal legislation that gave millions of new women voters access to the polls, women participated at all levels of government. Still, because individual states could affect local voting laws, discrimination based on race, class, and ethnicity kept millions more Americans from voting for another forty-five years.

The effort to achieve equitable access and representation continues to this day.

 

Drusilla Poole (1883-1972)

 

After the vote passed, organizations that campaigned for woman suffrage focused their energy on teaching women about their new rights. In 1919, the New York Woman Suffrage Association became the New York League of Women Voters, a non-partisan organization with civic education as their main mission, and many Staten Island suffragists remained involved. The exclusion of women of color carried over to the new group. On Staten Island, activist women of color, including Drusilla Poole of Shiloh AME Zion Church, stepped in to fill this gap in educational resources. They founded the Women’s Civic and Political Union, an organization with the goal of teaching African American women about politics and encouraging them to exercise their right to vote.

Drusilla Poole was born in Washington D.C, the third of seven children. She married Archibald Poole and moved with him to his hometown of Staten Island at the close of the 1910s. She worked for many years as a secretary to the William A. Morris Moving Van Line company and became deeply involved with Shiloh AME Zion Church. She was a leader in the community and an active member of the National Association of Colored Women, Urban League, Empire State Federation of Women’s Clubs, Inc., and Helping Hand Society. She founding Secretary of the NAACP Staten Island Chapter served as President of the Women’s Civic and Political Union through the 1930s.

 

 

Mary Grey Brewer (1875 – 1950)

 

In 1918, Mary Brewer became the first woman on Staten Island to run for office on a major party ticket. She beat a male opponent to win the Republican nomination for a State Senate seat representing Richmond and Rockland Counties. She was in favor of prohibition and improved roads and against the proposed landfill on Staten Island. She hoped that her fellow suffragists would unite to put her in office, but she could not overcome the conservative Democratic leanings of 1910s Staten Island.

Elizabeth Connelly became the first woman elected to public office on Staten Island when she won her campaign for the New York State Assembly in 1973. Four years later, Democrat Mary Codd was elected Staten Island’s first female City Council representative. In 1981, she became the first woman to run for Mayor of New York City on a major party ticket. In 1990, Republican Susan Molinari took office as Staten Island’s first and only female U.S. Congressional Representative.

 

Today, women occupy between 20 and 30 percent of elective legislative or executive offices at the local, state, and federal levels. Of Staten Island’s twelve legislative representatives, four are women: Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, State Senator Diane Savino, Assembly Member Nicole Malliotakis, and City Council Member Debi Rose. Of the island’s eleven executive officers, two are women: Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Leticia James. Debi Rose and Leticia James made history as the first people of color elected to their roles. Many women also serve in appointed government positions and make up thirty-seven percent of judges in New York’s State Courts.

Passing the Torch: Women Who Lead

 

Publicize

Introduction

Suffragists claimed space in newsprint and pubished their own periodicals, arguing passionately in favor of women's political equality.

They staffed booths at carnivals and country fairs to distribue their literature and recruit supporters.

 

 

C. Arthur Hollick (1857 – 1933)

 

A scientist by trade, Hollick was one of the founders of the Staten Island Museum. He was passionate about Staten Island’s natural and political history and made efforts to preserve both specimens and documents for future study. He married Adeline Talkington in 1881. By the 1910s, he was director of the Museum, and both he and Adeline were involved in the woman suffrage movement. They attended suffrage events in New York City and Washington D.C. and preserved the event programs and postcards in the Museum’s collection alongside the suffrage periodicals that Hollick meticulously collected.

The Staten Island Museum’s collection of periodicals was donated by Museum founder Arthur Hollick and his wife Adeline Hollick, and features three titles: The Woman Voter, a local paper published by the New York State Woman Suffrage Association, and two national papers The Suffragist, published by the National Woman’s Party, and The Woman Citizen, published by the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Arthur Hollick wrote to fellow suffragists and even the offices of the papers themselves to track down missing issues and create complete collections of issues, ensuring that future generations would be able to learn about the cause from the suffragists in their own words. The periodicals were a primary source of information for this exhibition. 

You can view all of the digitized periodicals at Archives.org here. 

 

 

Mary Lawton Metcalf (1859 – 1949)

 

Many suffragists were newspaper reporters who were experts at communicating their message. Some of the most extensive coverage of the activities of the Staten Island Woman Suffrage Party came from the women journalists at the Staten Island World. Women writing under pen names were the main contributors to one of the paper’s columns called “Staten Island Women Folk.”

Mary Lawton Metcalfe was influential in Staten Island society and was a columnist for the Staten Island World.  She wrote under the pen name Electra Sparks in favor of woman suffrage and social reforms like food purity and price regulations as well as on the possibilities of the burgeoning technology of film. Metcalfe was instrumental in organizing women’s clubs’ commanding presence at the 1910 Richmond County Fair at Dongan Hills. She covered the fair in detail for the paper.

Agitate

Introduction

Staten Island's suffragists brought the movement from neighborhood parlors to the streets of New York City and even to the skies above it.

Suffragists across the nation took bold action to raise awareness about their cause by organizing marches, protests, and spectacles to create momentum for legislation.

 

Alberta Hill

 

Well-known in both local and national suffrage circles, Staten Islander Alberta Hill knew how to win press attention. In 1913, she rode in the Washington D.C. suffrage parade on horseback. In 1914, she led a procession of suffragists dressed in white from the Benjamin Franklin Statue near City Hall Park to the statue of George Washington outside Federal Hall, where she gave a speech. In 1915, she made the papers as a bride. Having put off her wedding until after Election Day to make sure that she could dedicate herself fully to the campaign, she married Francis Smith on November 4, 1915, two days after the suffragists’ devastating defeat in New York. After the ceremony, when Father O’Donnell of Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in Staten Island impishly asked if she would obey her husband, Hill bowed dramatically and said, “No.”

 

 

Dorothy Day (1897 – 1980)

 

In November 1917, famed Staten Islander Dorothy Day, a radical activist and newspaper columnist, went to Washington D.C. to picket in front of the White House with the National Woman’s Party. The picketers, called the Silent Sentinels, had been staging bold protests using banners repurposing President Wilson’s words about fighting for democracy in Europe to question why women still did not have access to the vote at home. They were arrested and treated brutally in jail. Day protested their mistreatment and went to jail herself for thirty days, where she and her companions were beaten by their jailers at Occoquan Workhouse – an incident that came to be known as the “The Night of Terror.” The Staten Island Woman Suffrage Party distanced itself from the militant pickets in Washington D.C., calling them unpatriotic for publicly criticizing the president in wartime.

Raised in Chicago, Dorothy Day moved to Staten Island in the early 1920s to study and to write. Before her arrival in Annadale Beach, Day was a radical activist who protested for peace, and immigrants’, workers’, and women’s rights. She lived on Staten Island with a man named Forester and had a daughter with him at a time when it was taboo to give birth outside of marriage. Soon after her daughter Tamar was born, Day converted to Catholicism, and she and Tamar were baptized at Our Lady Help of Christians Church in Tottenville. A co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, Day is currently being considered for sainthood in the Catholic Church.

 

Rosalie Gardiner Jones (1883 – 1978)

 

On May 20, 1913, nationally renowned suffragist Rosalie Gardiner Jones made a spectacular debut in Staten Island, where she became the first suffragist to fly for the cause. She flew with the pilot Harry Bingham Brown, who was a fixture in the robust community of early airplane pilots, engineers, and enthusiasts that formed on Staten Island at the turn of the 20th Century. Jones boarded Brown’s plane in Grant City. The New York Times reported, “Gen. Rosalie did not show a sign of fear as she took her seat in the biplane, seized a steel rod, the only thing to hold to, with her left hand…and, with a bunch of leaflets in her right hand, nodded a smiling good-bye to the crowd below.”  Decorated with “Votes for Women” banners, the plane landed in Oakwood at the Flying Carnival of the Staten Island Aeronautical Society in a flurry of yellow leaflets, which Jones had been scattering along the way.

General Jones, so called because she led her “suffrage army” on two hikes for suffrage, was a master of creating spectacle. One group of hikers walked from the New York area to Albany in December 1912. Another group marched from New York to Washington D.C. in March 1913 to join the suffrage parade there. In May of that year, she became the first suffragist to fly for the cause at Staten Island’s Aeronautical Carnival. She repeated this stunt later in 1913 in her hometown of Long Island. In 1927, she married Democratic Congressman Charles Dill, but divorced him and ran for Congress herself in 1934.

In December 1916, Staten Island’s suffragists built on Jones’ legacy and schemed to interrupt President Wilson’s ceremonial lighting of the Statue of Liberty by flying over the president’s yacht and “bombing” it with suffrage leaflets to point out that women still lacked the full rights and liberties of American citizens.  Organizers covered the plane in suffrage colors and Mary Otis Willcox nailed a banner to the front that said, “Women Want Liberty Too.” Pilot Leda Richberg-Hornsby, the first female graduate of the Wright Flying School, took off from Staten Island with passenger Ida Blair, publicity chairman of the New York State Woman Suffrage Party. Unfortunately, the plane crashed in the marshland on Staten Island’s coast without carrying out its mission. No one was seriously hurt.

Educate

Introduction

Suffragists had to educate both men and women that women's views mattered and that they had a right to participate in government. Staten Island suffratists argued their cause before the houses of the New York State Legislature, to women gathered in parlors and clubs, and to male voters everywhere from lecture halls to street corners. 

 

Elizabeth Neall Gay (1819 – 1907)

 

A Quaker from Pennsylvania, Elizabeth Neall was dedicated to ending slavery and accustomed to women’s equal participation in political discourse. However, when she attended the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London alongside early women’s rights leaders Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, women were barred the proceedings. Suffragists later pointed to the meeting as a catalyst for organizing the women’s rights movement. A few years later, Neall married journalist Sydney Howard Gay, editor of the Anti-Slavery Standard and moved to Staten Island. The couple opened their home to freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad. Elizabeth remained committed to women’s rights, a conviction she passed on to her daughter Mary Otis (Gay) Willcox.

 

 

George William Curtis (1824 – 1893) and Elizabeth Burrill Curtis (1861 – 1914)

 

Staten Island women had two potential routes to the vote: Either the New York State Legislature would amend the state constitution to include women’s right to vote or the United States Congress would amend the Constitution to bar states from sex-based discrimination at the polls. Political dynamos George William Curtis and his daughter Elizabeth Burrill Curtis represented Staten Island at the conventions of 1867 and 1894 respectively, arguing for a change to the State Constitution that would allow women to vote.

Internationally renowned orator, author, and editor, George William Curtis settled on Staten Island in the 1850s to marry Anna Shaw of the influential Shaw Family. He supported universal suffrage, the extension of voting rights to men and women regardless of race or color. In his speech at the 1867 New York State Constitutional Convention he declared that “a woman has the same right to her life, liberty and property that a man has and she has consequently the same right to an equality of protection that he has,” earning the praise of his friend, suffrage leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton. 

Elizabeth Burrill Curtis proudly carried on the progressive legacy of the Shaw and Curtis families as a vocal advocate for voting rights and civic education for women. At the 1894 New York State Constitutional Convention, Curtis argued, “Because the protection and safety of the home are so vital to most women…I plead for the power to effectually guard that home.” Her pleas went unanswered, but she was undeterred by the loss. Curtis founded the Political Equality Club, “the first organization on Staten Island to preach the equality of women and men,” in 1895. After her death in 1914, fellow suffragist Mary Otis Willcox said of Curtis’ contribution to the movement, “By the force of her personality [she] raised the cause from a subject of ridicule to one at least for serious consideration.”

 

 

Mary Otis Willcox (1861 – 1933)

 

The Political Equality Club conducted its earliest meetings as lectures and discussions in the parlors of Staten Island’s social elite. Eventually, local suffragists expanded their tactics to include broader recruitment efforts like automobile tours and open-air meetings, seeking to unite women from the various towns on Staten Island in an active campaign for the vote.

Described as “indefatigable” by her fellow suffragists, Willcox began her work as an officer in the Political Equality Club and then spearheaded the local campaign as Chair of the Staten Island Woman Suffrage Party. A wealthy woman, Willcox was able to host many of the Party’s events in her home, provide her car to transport suffrage speakers around the island, and give generously to the movement’s fundraising efforts. She and her husband, William G. Willcox supported many of Staten Island’s charitable organizations, including the Red Cross, Shiloh AME Zion Church, and the Staten Island Museum. In fact, at her death, the Museum recognized her as the first woman to serve on its Board of Trustees.

Organize

Introduction

Prior to the 19th Amendment, laws barred women from voting, but that did not stop them from organizing. 

Staten Island women founded church groups and women's clubs that operated as politcal structures. Within these organizations, women debated issues, voted on decisions, and elected officers. Suffragists used these networks to organize their campaign for suffrage. 

 

The Staten Island Woman Suffrage Party (SIWSP)

 

A In 1910, local activists Mary Otis Willcox, Edith Whitmore, and May Sexton Simonson formally organized the Staten Island Woman Suffrage Party (SIWSP) to campaign for women’s right to vote in New York State. SIWSP leaders used the Island’s powerful political, social, and economic networks to recruit over 10,000 registered members by the time New York State voters passed the amendment giving women the vote in 1917. Members spanned the political spectrum. Liberals, conservatives, philanthropists, schoolteachers, and temperance and labor activists banded together to campaign for political equality for women. Despite their diverse political affiliations, most SIWSP members were white. African- American women on Staten Island created their own activist networks through clubs, sororities, and parish communities.

 

 

Florence Spearing Randolph (1866 -1951)

 

In 1886, Randolph moved from South Carolina to New Jersey with her husband Hugh Randolph to work as a dressmaker. She became involved with the Monmouth Street AME Zion Church in Jersey City, where she taught Sunday school. She studied and received her preacher’s license in 1897, becoming one of few women in the Church to earn this distinction. By that time, she was already politically active as a member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.

In 1916, women activists founded the New Jersey Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs and elected Randolph, future pastor of Rossville AME Zion Church, as president. Randolph’s election demonstrated the deep ties between civil rights activism and the AME Zion church in the region. Under Randolph’s leadership, the federation created departments dedicated to education, temperance, “race history,” and, of course, suffrage. Rossville’s Buds of Promise Club represented Staten Island in the Federation. From 1919 until 1921, Randolph served as pastor of Rossville AME Zion Church in Staten Island. During this time, she continued as President of the New Jersey Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs and as a member in the New Jersey Republican State Committee.

 

 

Ella Boole (1858 – 1952)

 

In the 1888, Ella Boole moved to Staten Island with her husband Reverend William Boole. The couple were among the founders of Prohibition Park, Staten Island, a “dry” community and summer retreat for those who abstained from drinking alcohol as a means of social reform. Beginning in the 1890s, Ella Boole rose through the ranks of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), an international organization that campaigned for abstinence from alcohol and women’s suffrage as avenues to protect women from abuse or destitution at the hands of alcoholic husbands or fathers. Boole ascended to the Presidency of the World WCTU in 1931 and remained in the role for 16 years. She also ran for the United States Senate in 1920.

 

 

Linda French (1881 - 1972)

 

A graduate of Boston College, Linda French was working as a teacher in Manhattan when she marched in the first Parade for Woman Suffrage in New York in 1912. “I wouldn’t have missed it for anything,” she declared in a letter to her mother. That same week she attended a Boston College Alumni dinner and met Clara Whitmore and Florence Shepherd of Curtis High School, a connection that would result in Linda’s move to Staten Island the following year to teach German at Curtis and join her fellow teachers in continued suffrage activism.

Sunday Art Studio: Access Art for All

Bird and Nature Walks: South Beach/Fort Wadsworth

Women of the Nation Arise!

EXHIBITION AND PROGRAM SERIES HONORING THE CENTENNIAL OF THE 19TH AMENDMENT

Women of the Nation Arise! Staten Islanders in the Fight for Women's Right to Vote

Women in the United States won a long-fought national victory in 1920 when the 19th Constitutional Amendment establishing their right to vote was ratified. Women in New York had earned that right in a state referendum in 1917. Staten Island’s role in the fight for woman suffrage was both innovative on a national level and uniquely suited to the community from which it came.

Women of the Nation Arise! presents stories of Staten Island suffragists focusing on four tactics they used in the decades-long struggle for political change before they could vote: education, organization, agitation, and publicity. As the site of the first flight for woman suffrage in the United States, Staten Island provided a distinctive setting for suffrage activism. 

One hundred years later, this exhibition also critically examines the woman suffrage movement as a complex web of imperfect strategies. Suffragists often leveraged racial, economic, ethnic, and geographical biases to advance their cause. In doing so, the movement both divided and unified women in building consensus in their efforts to win the right to vote.

The ratification of the 19th Amendment was a major milestone in American Democracy. The law added millions of women to the rolls of American voters, but it did not secure voting rights for all citizens. Efforts to ensure and expand access to the polls continued beyond 1920 and to this day. We celebrate the achievements of local suffragists acting on the grassroots level to create the momentum necessary for regional and national change. Their steadfast perseverance to achieve self-determination set a new standard for civic responsibility that still astounds and challenges us today.

Click on the thumbnails below to explore each section of the exhibition.

 

Suffragists had to educate both men and women that women's views mattered and that they had a right to participate in government. Staten Island suffratists argued their cause before the houses of the New York State Legislature, to women gathered in parlors and clubs, and to male voters everywhere from lecture halls to street corners.

Prior to the 19th Amendment, laws barred women from voting, but that did not stop them from organizing. Staten Island women founded church groups and women's clubs that operated as politcal structures. Within these organizations, women debated issues, voted on decisions, and elected officers. Suffragists used these networks to organize their campaign for suffrage.

Staten Island's suffragists brought the movement from neighborhood parlors to the streets of New York City and even to the skies above it.

Suffragists across the nation took bold action to raise awareness about their cause by organizing marches, protests, and spectacles to create momentum for legislation.  

Suffragists claimed space in newsprint and pubished their own periodicals, arguing passionately in favor of women's political equality.

They staffed booths at carnivals and country fairs to distribue their literature and recruit supporters.  

Empowered by state and federal legislation that gave millions of new women voters access to the polls, women participated at all levels of government. Still, because individual states could affect local voting laws, discrimination based on race, class, and ethnicity kept millions more Americans from voting for another forty-five years.

The effort to achieve equitable access and representation continues to this day.   

Women of the Nation Arise! has been in development for more than three years with research spearheaded by the Museum’s archives manager Gabriella Leone, drawing upon the Museum’s collections, original research, and loaned items from Historic Richmond Town and other repositories. This exhibition ties to the Staten Island Museum’s institutional history since Museum Founder Arthur Hollick and his wife Adeline were active Suffragists and collected related periodicals at the time for the Museum’s collection. The Woman Voter and The Suffragist have been digitized and made publicly available online: https://archive.org/details/statenislandmuseum.

 

#WomensSuffrageNYC

 

 

Exhibition Advisory Panel:

Susan Goodier is a Lecturer of History at SUNY Oneonta and specializes in U.S. Public Policy History, International Gender and Culture, and Black Women’s History. She is the author of No Votes for Women: The New York State Anti-Suffrage Movement and co-author with Karen Pastorello of Women Will Vote: Winning Suffrage in New York State.

Catherine Gray is Co-President of the League of Women Voters of the City of New York since 2016 after being a member for more than a decade. She is retired from her job as a librarian with Brooklyn Public Library for over thirty years.

Sarah Litvin is Director of the Reher Center for Immigrant History and Culture, a new museum and center for civic engagement in Kingston, New York. Sarah was formerly on the curatorial team of the New-York Historical Society’s Center for Women’s History. She completed her PhD in U.S. women’s history in 2019 with a dissertation focused on how women used the upright parlor piano to pursue their far-flung ambitions and expand women’s roles at the turn of the twentieth century.

Margaret Middleton is an independent exhibit designer and museum consultant based in Providence, Rhode Island. They have a BFA in industrial design from the Rhode Island School of Design and write about the intersection of museum work and social justice movements.

Debbie-Ann Paige is a public historian specializing in African American history, co-president of the newly chartered Richard B. Dickenson Chapter of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society (AAGHS) and professional genealogist.

 

 

This Exhibition is made possible with lead support from Con Edison and by individual donors. Staten Island Museum is funded in part by the New York State Council on the Arts and public funds provided through the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs.

         

 

Thanks to individual donors to the exhibition:

Gina-Marie Reitano
Lorelei Stevens & Iain M. Cameron
Edwina Martin
Kathryn Aquino
Pamela & Alice Adamo
Maureen Smith
Susan Grabel & George Rappaport

 

 

International Women’s Day!

Women of the Nation Arise!

Family Art Workshop: Voting Rocks!

Women of the Nation Arise!

Super Science: Biochemistry

Imagination Studio: Marble Runs and Crazy Mazes

Sunday Art Studio: Access Art for All

Bird and Nature Walk: Wolfe’s Pond Park

Family Art Workshop: Snow Globes

Bird and Nature Walk: Great Kills Park

Korean Lunar New Year Celebration

Super Science: Electricity

From Seed to Supper: Rice Tasting with Gullah Chef BJ Dennis

Bird and Nature Walk: Conference House Park

American Gardens and the African Diaspora

Family Art Workshop: Luminary Lanterns

Super Science: Exploring Light

Bird and Nature Walk: Great Kills Park

Chef BJ Dennis Comes to the Staten Island Museum

The Edible Island Market

Family Art Workshops: Mystical Maps

American Gardens and From Seed to Supper

AMERICAN GARDENS AND THE AFRICAN DIASPORA

Saturday, January 11, 2pm-3:30pm

FREE with Museum Admission

1000 Richmond Terrace, Building A, SI, NY 10301

An exploration of Black Diasporan ornamental gardens and the growers, garden clubs, and horticulturists associated with them led by Staten Island based horticulturist Wambui Ippolito.

Wambui Ippolito is the horticulturist and principal designer of her own New York based landscape design firm. She is a graduate of the New York Botanical Garden’s School of Professional Horticulture. Also joining the discussion is author Malaika Adero, Executive Director and Curator at the Anne Spencer House & Garden Museum Shaun Spencer-Hester, and botanist Dr. Abdul-Salim. 

Tickets for this event are no longer available. 

Wambui Ippolito - Wambui Ippolito is the horticulturist and principal designer of her own New York based landscape design. She is a graduate of the New York Botanical Garden's School of Professional Horticulture where she studied under some of the country's top gardening experts. Wambui teaches horticulture classes in botanical gardens and horticulture institutions in New York and New Jersey.

Malaika Adero – Malaika Adero, of Adero's Literary Tribe,LLC, works with writers and organizations developing and promoting books. She is the coauthor of The Mother of Black Hollywood with Jenifer Lewis (Amistad) and Speak, So You Can Speak Again: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston (Doubleday). And, she is the author of Up South (The New Press), an anthology of writings and photographs on the Great Migration and A Black Woman Did That (Downtown Bookworks January 2020, profiles of extraordinary women illustrated by Chanté Timothy. She is now completing a work of narrative nonfiction on her family's experience from enslavement through the Black Liberation movements of the 20th Century in East Tennessee. The working title is True Names.

She is primarily based New York City, but maintains homes in Atlanta, and Knoxville where she tends to her family home and gardens in the historic community of Lyons View that has been in her family since the Reconstruction era.

Shaun Spencer-Hester – Shaun Spencer-Hester is the mother of one son, Jordan Alexander Hester, and resides in Lynchburg, VA. Spencer-Hester is an artisan, historian, designer, curator, playwright, and avid social and community supporter.  She currently serves as the Executive Director and Curator at the Anne Spencer House & Garden Museum, a historic house museum dedicated to the preservation and celebration of the literary, cultural, and social legacy of her grandmother, Harlem Renaissance poet and activist Anne Spencer. Her restoration and curatorial work during the past ten years at the Anne Spencer Museum has been nationally and internationally recognized.

Kobinah Abdul-Salim - Dr. Abdul-Salim is a botanist with interests in the evolution of plants of the world’s tropical forests. He has conducted field research in Africa and Madagascar and worked as a fellow at both the New York Botanical Garden and Brooklyn Botanic Garden. He holds a PhD in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University, a Masters degree in Biology from University of Missouri-St. Louis, and a Bachelor’s degree from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. He has taught at Ohio State University and the City University of New York, and is currently President of Protologue, LLC, an educational media publishing and consulting firm based in Trenton, NJ.

 

FROM SEED TO SUPPER: Rice Tasting with Gullah Chef BJ Dennis

Thursday, January 16, 7pm-9pm

$35 per person (Registration required. Space is limited.)

1000 Richmond Terrace, Building A, SI, NY 10301

Join renowned chef BJ Dennis in conversation with horticulturist Wambui Ippolito for an interactive exploration of the culinary traditions of the Gullah, a distinctive group of Black Americans from coastal South Carolina and Georgia. A series of rice tastings are matched with discussion around the history and culture of this all important seed and special link between the Gullah and the people of West Africa.

Benjamin “BJ” Dennis IV is a chef born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, whose cooking is inspired by Gullah Geechee culture, with its origins in West Africa. Dennis studied culinary traditions in St. Thomas before returning to the Lowcountry to cook at various restaurants including Anson’s, Carolinas, Hank’s Seafood, and 82 Queen. He now cooks at various events across the country and pop-up dinners across the Lowcountry.

Read more about Chef Dennis in Bon Appétite.

This event has reached capacity.

 

American Gardens and the African Diaspora and From Seed to Supper is funded, in part, through Staten Island Arts’ Expanding Audiences and Cultural Participation program, which has been made possible through the generosity of New York Community Trust, The Staten Island Foundation, and the Altman Foundation.

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