NCMC'S 40th Birthday . . . It was a BLAST!
President's Report to Membership
Neil Fulghum
December 2003
Despite swirling Arctic air and rain mixed with sleet early in
the day, 110 hearty and hardy North Carolina Museums Council
members and supporters gathered in Raleigh on December 4 to
celebrate our organization's 40th birthday. A good time was had by
all, with cheerful conversations, camaraderie, wonderful
exhibitions, and good food warming up the chilly weather.
The day-long event began at the North Carolina Museum of Art,
where NCMC members and guests had an opportunity to tour free of
charge the museum's large and very impressive exhibition
"Defying Gravity: Contemporary Art and Flight."
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Neil Fulghum, President of the North Carolina Museums Council
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Lisbeth Evans,
secretary of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources |
Later in the morning, in the museum's auditorium, Lisbeth Evans,
secretary of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources (DCR),
commended NCMC for its four decades of service in promoting and
supporting our state's art, history, and science institutions. The
North Carolina Museum of Art's deputy director of collections and
programs, John Coffey, also welcomed participants and shared
information about that museum's own long-term development plans and
his staff's growing involvement with NCMC.
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John Coffey, NC Museum of Art's deputy director of collections and
programs |
Betty Haskin, chair of the NCMC Art
Section, introduced the featured speaker for art |
Michael Monroe of
Virginia then gave a formal presentation on behalf of our
organization's Art Section. A former curator at the Smithsonian's
Renwick Gallery and past director of the American Craft Council,
Monroe spoke on "The Art of Craft." He shared images of
highly creative works in glass, metal, wood, and other media, using
them to demonstrate how form and technique can combine to ignite the
imagination, sometimes trick the eye, and often "nourish"
the soul. |
Michael Monroe presented a fascinating
audiovisual presentation on "The Art of Craft" |
| Following Monroe's talk and refreshments, birthday participants
boarded chartered buses to downtown Raleigh to visit Exploris, one
of our state's premier multi-disciplinary "global"
museums. There we were warmly greeted again, this time by Anne
Bryan, president of Exploris.
NCMC members and guests enjoyed lunch with Anne and her
staff during a very productive but concise business meeting
held by the Council. Copies of NCMC's 2004 directory were
circulated and updates were given on FOCoS
(our Free On-site Consultation Service) and on NCMC's
partnership in the ambitious statewide "1000/100"
Project. This project, as outlined in earlier reports to
Council, seeks to create a grassroots network on heritage and
cultural tourism, enlisting and training 1000 people in
workshops that intend to touch or represent all 100 counties
of North Carolina.
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Several proposed changes to NCMC's by-laws were then considered
in the business meeting and voted on by members. The most
significant change is the Council's establishment (actually
"reactivation" from NCMC's formative years) of a fourth
membership section: a Children's Museums section. This new section
will formally join our Art, History, and Science sections and will
be chaired by Kathy Shonts of Discovery Place.
Betsy Buford of the NC Museum of History
Kathryn Beach, chair of the NCMC History
Section |
From Exploris, birthday participants at mid-afternoon moved a
short distance, again by buses, to the North Carolina Museum of
History to hear the day's second guest speaker. In his address
"Contested Terrain: History, Museums, and the Public," Dr.
James B. Gardner of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of
American History discussed the challenges of preserving and
presenting the history of our diverse culture. Using examples of
projects in which he has been involved as associate director for
Curatorial Affairs at the Smithsonian, Gardner elaborated on how selection,
interpretation, and |
Dr. James Gardner gave a
thought-provoking lecture, "Contested Terrain: History,
Museums and the Public" |
| presentation in the exhibition
process mutually affect and often conflict with different
perspectives of our nation's past.
Prior to Gardner's thought-provoking presentation, the North
Carolina Museum of History's director, Betsy Buford, welcomed
everyone and commented on the links her institution's staff, both
past and present, have with NCMC's history and our organization's
current programming.
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Betsy Bennett, director or the NC Museum of Natural
Sciences, greeted NCMC members |
The final guest speaker of the day, the one representing NCMC's
Science Section, was Dr. Jack Sommer of Charlotte. Dr. Sommer's
presentation was held in the auditorium of the North Carolina Museum
of Natural Sciences, where we were greeted by the museum's director,
Betsy Bennett, and her staff.
Sommer spoke on "Building Networks of Science and Civic
Partnership," offering insight and statistics about the
declining performance of students in science in our nation's
educational system.
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Debbie Curry, chair of the NCMC Science
Section, introduced speaker Jack Sommer. |
Jack Sommer presented "Building
Networks of Science & Civic Partnerships" |
As president of the Political Economy Research
Institute and as regional director of Southeast Sigma Xi, Dr. Sommer
advocated greater cooperation between science-based museums,
university faculty, and other science professionals associated with
related consortia and businesses.
After the science presentation, everyone had free time to tour
(again free of charge thanks to our hosts) either the
"Titanic" exhibition at the North Carolina Museum of Life
and Science or the IMAX film "Lewis & Clark: Great Journey
West" at Exploris. NCMC members and our guests also had the
option of seeing at the North Carolina Museum of History the
exhibition "Pioneers of Aviation" or the artifact-rich
traveling exhibition "Lindbergh," which was produced in
St. Louis by the Missouri Historical Society. |
NCMC's final birthday events-the reception and dinner-were
graciously hosted, too, by the North Carolina Museum of History. All
participants were treated with items to remember this occasion. The
guest speakers received gift baskets filled with Tar Heel snacks and
other goodies, and all those in attendance received keepsake bags
prepared by John Campbell and the rest of the museum's collections
branch. These bags contained note cards from Exploris, a
"Passport" to North Carolina Historic Sites, special
pencils, key chains, and other useful souvenirs.
During dinner, NCMC's president drew special attention to his
twenty-one predecessors, reading all the names of our past
presidents and calling for a general round of applause for these
people who represented many hundreds of our predecessors and
countless hours volunteered to advancing our respective disciplines
and overall profession.
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Before boarding buses to return to the North Carolina Museum of
Art and to our individual cars, Harry Warren, a past president
himself, ended the day's festivities with a scholarly but very
humorous Power Point presentation on NCMC's history, the cutting of
a candle-lit birthday cake, and with a rousing rendition of
"Happy Birthday." |
Judging by the response of those in attendance, NCMC's
40th-birthday was a smashing success despite the inclement weather.
Our organization connected and reconnected with many important
officials, directors, and other colleagues from around our state and
outside North Carolina. This event also spread NCMC's acronym far
and wide and showcased quite effectively all the work our
organization's members have done since 1963 and are doing now.
I am certainly honored to be your current president and would be
amiss if I did not draw some additional kudos for a few of our board
members who did so much to make this celebration possible. We owe
special thanks to Past President Dusty Wescott at the Raleigh City
Museum and to Treasurer Andrea Bogart at the State Capitol. We also
need to recognize and extend handshakes to NCMC Secretary Clare Bass
and to our Membership Development Chair LeRae Umfleet. Both Clare
and LeRae work for DCR's Office of Archives & History, and they
did a masterful job in organizing the registration tables, preparing
name tags, and generally handling the distribution of directories
and other reference material at our birthday.
To thank properly all the organizers, host institutions, and all
those individuals who attended our 40th birthday would require a
ream of paper or far more space than we can devote on this website.
Suffice it to say that all this work and the professional good will
it engendered form an excellent template or pattern for our own
successors, for those who will be planning NCMC's golden anniversary
in 2013. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NCMC!
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