Museums in Strange Places

So much of Maryland was built on the back of enslaved Africans, yet it’s easy to avoid confronting the history of slavery in Maryland’s former plantation country. Historic Sotterley is trying to change that. The plantation was built in 1703 by a man who made his money off the slave trade, and the site was witness to 165 continuous years of slavery. Today, staff and descendants at Sotterley are committed to sharing the site’s whole history and healing the legacy of trauma left by the violence of slavery with the ultimate goal of making their community and their world a better, kinder place.

This episode is sponsored by Grove History Consulting

TRANSCRIPT

Find more information on the museum and photos on my website, hhethmon.com.

If you enjoy Museums in Strange Places, please help me keep it going by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes or sharing this episode with a friend. Let me know what you think by sending me a tweet @hannah_rfh.

Interested in starting a podcast at your organization? Check out my new book, Your Museum Needs a Podcast: A Step-ByStep Guide to Podcasting on a Budget for Museums, History Organizations, and Cultural Nonprofits.

What do Baltimore, Russian Jews, the third oldest synagogue in America, Eastern European Catholics, seances, and Harry Houdini have in common? You’ll find out in this episode, a visit to the Jewish Museum of Maryland, an institution that prioritizes storytelling (and is pretty good at it). Join me for a tour of the historic Lloyd Street Synagogue, a journey back in history to the heyday of the Jewish market on Baltimore’s East Lombard Street, and a celebration of the life of Harry Houdini, the son of a rabbi.

All the music in this episode is by Seth Kibel and the Alexandria Kleztet.

This episode is sponsored by Grove History Consulting

TRANSCRIPT

Find more information on the museum and photos on my website, hhethmon.com.

If you enjoy Museums in Strange Places, please help me keep it going by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes or sharing this episode with a friend. Let me know what you think by sending me a tweet @hannah_rfh.

Interested in starting a podcast at your organization? Check out my new book, Your Museum Needs a Podcast: A Step-ByStep Guide to Podcasting on a Budget for Museums, History Organizations, and Cultural Nonprofits.

In each season of this podcast, I explore a different country, state, or region through its museums. In Season 1, I traveled around Iceland. For season two, I decided to explore my native state of Maryland. I visited 22 of Maryland’s most interesting and unique museums, including America’s first purpose built museum, a historic synagogue, a black history wax museum, a New Deal public housing utopia, the house where Edgar Allan Poe published his first poem, one of the earliest nursing schools in the country, and so many more.

On November 14, tune in to hear the first three episodes of Museums in Strange Places, “Season 2: Museums of Maryland.” Join me on my latest adventure, as discover what stories these incredible cultural institutions hold and how they reflect and shape this Maryland’s unique identity.

Interested in starting a podcast at your organization? Check out my new book, Your Museum Needs a Podcast: A Step by Step Guide to Podcast on a Budget for Museums, History Organizations, and Cultural Nonprofits. Get your copy today on Amazon, where it is available as an ebook, paperback, and Audible audiobook.

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Welcome to Museums in Strange Places, a podcast for people who love museums, stories, culture, and exploring the world. In Season 1, the podcast focuses on museums in Iceland. Season 2 will explore the museums of Maryland.

I’m your host, Hannah Hethmon, and in each episode I visit a different museum to discover its stories, discuss challenges and triumphs with fascinating museum professionals (and volunteers), and get to know each season’s country, state, or region through it museums.

I believe that museums are one of the best ways to discover a place, whether it’s your first time visiting or you’ve lived there your whole life. Join me on this adventure as I get to know the world....one museum as a time.

Get bonus material from each episode (photos, further reading, links) at hhethmon.com. Follow me on Twitter @hannah_rfh and Instagram @hannah_rfh. Use the hashtag #MuseumsinStrangePlaces on social media.

Iceland has a lot of weird traditional foods, but nothing compares to fermented shark meat. The family at Bjarnarhöfn has been hunting and fermenting shark meat for nearly 400 years, although today they only process bycatch Greenland sharks. Many years ago, the family opened a Shark Museum at the farm to share their traditions and introduce the world to “hákarl”. In this episode, I get an inside look at how one family continues this traditional method of de-toxifying shark meat while sharing their craft with anyone who’s brave enough to take a bite.

(To take advantage of the special offer in the episode, you can send me a message via Twitter, Instagram, or email.)

This episode is sponsored by Locatify. The featured song in this episode is “Mamma þarf að djamma” by Baggalútur.

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Welcome to Museums in Strange Places, a podcast for people who love museums, stories, culture, and exploring the world. In Season One, the podcast focuses on museums in Iceland. Season Two (coming Fall 2018) will explore the museums of Maryland.

I’m your host, Hannah Hethmon, and in each episode I visit a different museum to discover its stories, discuss challenges and triumphs with fascinating museum professionals (and volunteers), and get to know each season’s country, state, or region through it museums.

I believe that museums are one of the best ways to discover a place, whether it’s your first time visiting or you’ve lived there your whole life. Join me on this adventure as I get to know the world....one museum as a time.

Get bonus material from each episode (photos, further reading, links) at hhethmon.com. Follow me on Twitter @hannah_rfh and Instagram @hannah_rfh. Use the hashtag #MuseumsinStrangePlaces on social media.

Akranes is a coastal town in the southwest region of Iceland with a growing population of about 7,000. They have a unique heritage, as the area was settled in large part by Celts, not Norsemen. The charming Akranes Folk Museum has been around for almost 60 years, and is beginning a large project to revamp their exhibits to better serve the new residents of the area, Icelanders visiting from the greater Reykjavík area, and an increasing numbers of foreign visitors. I sat down with the museum's director Jón Allansson to discuss the town's unique history and their surprising connection to the current US president.

Music in this episode is by the Icelandic musician Snorri Helgason.

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Museums in Strange Places is a podcast for people who love museums, stories, culture, and exploring the world. This year, the podcast focuses on museums in Iceland.

Subscribe to Museums in Strange Places and you can expect fascinating conversations with Icelandic museum professionals, world class exhibitions, private museums in gas stations, an introduction to Icelanders and their knack for storytelling, and a unique window into the inner workings of museums on this strange but wonderful little island.

Get bonus material from each episode (photos, further reading, links) at hhethmon.com. Use the hashtag #MuseumsinStrangePlaces on social media.

The podcast is hosted by Hannah Hethmon, an American Fulbright Fellow living in Reykjavík. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram @hannah_rfh or on the web at hhethmon.com. Hannah has a BA in English Literature from the University of Maryland, College Park and an MA from the University of Iceland in Medieval Icelandic Studies. After completing her MA, she spent two years as the Marketing Coordinator for the American Association for State and Local History, a Nashville-based national nonprofit dedicated to serving history museums, historical societies, and other public history institutions.