A More Inclusive History: Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum Collections Management and Expanded Interpretation

FAIN: ZED-284017-22

Porter-Phelps-Huntington Foundation, Inc. (Hadley, MA 01035-9782)
Marla R. Miller (Project Director: May 2021 to January 2026)

New and retained staff to update the museum’s collection database as part of a planned initiative to make the site’s historical narrative more inclusive. 

The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum consists of an 18th-century farmstead on 27 acres of agricultural land along the Connecticut River in Western Massachusetts. This house, its farmlands, and its furnishings and papers remained in the same family from construction in 1752 until becoming a museum in 1949—providing an unusually coherent material, agricultural, and archival record of rural community life. Given significant new research and the depth and variety of its collections, the Museum has the potential to offer a more comprehensive interpretive experience, reflecting the stories of the lives of indigenous, enslaved, indentured, and day laborers on the site—making it a place of value for contemporary communities of color, and recalibrating longstanding narratives of race and class. This project will update the Museum’s collections database with attention to this broader history and will revise and expand the Museum’s interpretive plan and tour.