Kate Poe
The telephone box installed at the Somerville Museum explores key moments in the history of the museum itself through the lens of the institution's archival collection. The telephone box uses various materials from its collection to highlight moments and figures in the museum's history—a drawing from a 1951 calendar of the original design of the building on Westwood Road, a tintype of Historical Society member and author Albert L. Haskell, fundraising ephemera, and more. Logos from different eras in the museum's history show its evolution over time while retaining a mission of preserving the past while reflecting the present. It is a reminder that the physical remnants of our history are stored not only in archival boxes but in the world around us.
#11- SOMERVILLE MUSEUM
Located in the heart of the City at the intersection of Central Street and Westwood Road, the Somerville Museum has served as the community’s cultural institution for nearly a century. The Museum’s Federal Revival building was constructed in the 1920’s to house the growing collection of the Somerville Historical Society. Over the past century, it has evolved into the Somerville Museum, a community-based cultural institution that not only preserves stories but also creates opportunities for residents to tell their own.
Through the museum’s signature Community Curator program, participatory exhibitions, community storytelling initiatives and oral history programs, the Museum offers community members the opportunity to tell their own stories, own their own narrative, and shape public understanding.
Let Freedom Ring is a public art extension of this commitment to elevating local stories that are not always part of the celebrated historical narrative. Just as the telephone transformed who could communicate across distances, the project asks us to consider whose voices are heard, whose stories are preserved, and which unfinished struggles for freedom remain unaddressed in symbolic commemorations of national ideals.
Kate Poe is a painter based in MA and a volunteer in the archives at the Somerville Museum. She graduated from Boston University with a degree in graphic design with a minor in art history and is currently exploring a career in museums and collections care. While working primarily in oil paints, she has always used art as a way to express herself and explore the world, with a particular focus on storytelling.