Alicia Cooper - Sandy Spring Museum

Alicia Cooper

October 5, 2015
Dr. Blair
History Internship
                                                                                  Blog Post #1 

I don’t officially start my internship with Sandy Springs Museum until October 1st. However, I am very excited to beginning this process in enhancing my skills as a historian. I am truly interested to get out of the classroom and gain some hands on experience with documents and different types of artifacts. I will also get the change to archive different documents and perhaps conduct my own historical finds.

My internship will be at the Sandy Spring Museum is a locally open museum community based museum concentrated on community history. This museum has the convince of being about 10 mins from my house. Since the Sandy Spring Museum is a very small the mission is to develop meaningful connection with the residents of the area. Through these meaning connections they are able to explore community and local family history through artifacts, visual, literary and sometime performing arts.

A little bit of background on Sandy Spring Museum, it started when a group of residents noted the community’s history was being sold off with every passing of a long time resident. The organization was incorporated in 1981 by a group of volunteers. Their first location was in the basement of the Sandy Spring Bank. In the basement of the bank they had different exhibits show casing artifacts in hand made case. The volunteers also hosted different lectures and seminars about the local history of the area.  It wasn’t until 1986, when the museum moved to the residence Tall Timber, than again to its current location in 1997 on Bentley Road. The land in which the museum sits was donated by the Bentley Family, who’s ancestors moved to Sandy Spring in the late 1700s. The volunteers of the museum are proud to see the museum has expanded in size in 2007. Now the museum sits seven acres.

 

 

I will be working with Lydia Fraser who is the Collections Manager.  As a collection manager she is in charge of overseeing the proper care and preservation of objects within cultural at the Sandy Spring Museum.  One really interesting thing I was able to do after my interview. She showed me the collection. I have to say I was very impressed. The room had to be climate controlled and documents had to be handled with special gloves. You could say I was thrilled to go behind the magic rope. The only documents or artifacts I get to see are under glass at the museum. It was amazing to see them up close without a glass protecting them, of course I couldn’t touch the documents. It was also interesting to see the collection this small museum has. I was informed most of the things collected were donated to the museum from the local communities. Also, by families who found these things in there attic from the previous owners.

 

Since the museum is short staffed I will be also volunteering at programs that will be held on the weekend. The first program I will be helping at is the “Throw Back to High School with the Homecoming Gala”. Activities such as those are to help gain donations to keep the museum open. The event is suppose to recapture music from the decades, meeting community leaders, and celebrate the Sandy Spring Museum.