Purse Snatching … It’s a Crime!

In 1996 local quilters collaborated with the museum to create the Miami Centennial Quilt, now part of our collection. Quilters submitted too many blocks to fit in the quilt, so some gems had to be left out.

This block made it into the museum’s collection, but not the quilt. This block is decorated with tiny doll’s purses surrounding a tiny toy revolver. The purses contain little messages.

What’s this about? The maker had recently had her purse taken at gunpoint. Liz Chifari describes the incident and the block she had made in this paragraph:

“I needed to make ‘Paradise Stolen’ for therapeutic reasons, as I was mugged downtown several years ago. … The block shows that one criminal with a gun has his choice of easy targets who are powerless to stop him. It also points out the incongruity of the ugliness of crime and the beauty of the tropical backdrop against which it is played out. … “

Lift the flap at the bottom of the block, and there’s a larger message.

“Under the flap at the bottom of the block is a clear message that we must begin saying no to those who would take our paradise away. Inside some of the little purses are further messages of protest against crime …”

The Crime in Miami exhibition presented curatorial staff with a variety of challenges, one being having too many artifacts to fit into the gallery. Once again, this bittersweet quilt block was left out. Nevertheless, it conveys a victim’s perspective on a crime in Miami.

-- Rebecca A. Smith, Head, Special Collections 

Artist Mieko Kubota Wins Award

It’s my pleasure to report that local artist Mieko Kubota has won the 2010 Florida Folk Heritage Award, an annual award given to traditional artists and folklife advocates who have made significant contributions to the state’s cultural life. Florida’s Secretary of State has given out the award since 1985. Click here to learn more about the award and past awardees, many of whom live in South Florida.

Ms. Kubota is an expert practitioner of ikebana, the Japanese art of arranging flowers. She was born in Japan in 1937, and began studying ikebana as a teenager. Over the course of more than five decades, she has practiced this art and become a respected master. In addition to ikebana, she practices a variety of other Japanese traditions, including bonsai, calligraphy, origami and the tea ceremony.

For many years, she has shared Japanese traditional arts with the South Florida public. She has taught classes, offered demonstrations and exhibited her work, including as part of HistoryMiami’s exhibition Florida Folklife: Traditional Arts in Contemporary Communities. The online version of this exhibition features additional information about Ms. Kubota.

Altogether, her exceptional artistry, knowledge of Japanese folk culture and dedication to sharing her heritage with the public make her a deserving Florida Folk Heritage Award winner. We here at HistoryMiami congratulate her.

If you live in South Florida and would like to learn more about ikebana, please contact the Miami chapter of Ikebana International, a non-profit organization dedicated to the art form. You can email Susan Garcia at susangarcia54[at]aol.com. And if you would like to take ikebana lessons, please call Mieko Kubota at (305) 310-2511. She can also be reached at miekokubota[at]bellsouth.net.

-- Michael Knoll, Folklorist

Parting Fingerprints on Crime in Miami

Crime in Miami. It’s been quite a ride already and it’s not even done yet. The latest temporary exhibition at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida went up on February 19th. I have to admit, I think we here at the museum misjudged its popularity while we were planning. I don’t have any attendance figures, but there’s no question that our temporary gallery is much busier than it usually is, even after the incredibly successful run of Black Crossroads. I’m well aware of the fact that this is a good problem to have. If you have come to see the exhibition, I thank you.

The picture above shows one problem that “high attendance” has wrought. At the end of the exhibition, guests are invited to leave their fingerprint. Unfortunately, the wall designated for this purpose is basically full, so we’re trying to figure out how to add space for new visitors to leave their print, while also preserving the prints that have already been left. If you have any suggestions, or other comments about Crime in Miami, please leave them below.

-- Robert Harkins, Assistant Curator

Education’s Busiest Spring

What does it mean to educate? There are many answers to this question, and new ones are thought of every day. To the education staff at the museum, it is always on our minds as we brace for our busy season, and look into revaluating our programs.

One thing is for sure; we are not at a loss for our student population! The Historical Museum might have its busiest spring ever. In addition to our normal school bookings, we are now a part of the Cultural Passports Program that will bring thousands of 4th graders to visit us. The 4th grade curriculum requires the local history must be taught, so what better place than the Historical Museum!

We are also still booking our Historic Visits Program, a unique opportunity offered to public school students. This program allows for students to explore certain historic sites like the Barnacle, Matheson Hammock, Virginia Key Beach and various other sites. They learn about the importance of Historic Preservation, and how South Florida fits in the bigger picture with our historic sites. They document the sites with cameras that we provide, and together with pictures, video, sketches and information that they took from our educators, the students create a book about their experiences.

As always, we are aspire to gain more docents who are looking for a unique volunteer opportunity. Our summer camp, Family Fun days and internships bring in many volunteers of all ages and backgrounds. I am proud to say that we are slowly but steadily growing out volunteer base and are looking forward to continue expanding our docent program.

As we push toward the end of the school year, we are looking forward to providing top notch programming to our public, private and home school visitors, and being involved with as many programs like Cultural Passports as we can. Our students are our largest population of visitors, and we strive to make sure that they leave our museum with a wonderful experience!

-- Gina Neureuther, Education and Docent Programs Coordinator

Why would anyone care about teenagers?

“Maybe I’m something special, and maybe I’m not. Maybe I’m here for a reason and I might be going somewhere after this, but then again I might not. I wonder where I fit in?”

--Thomas Hine, The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager

These words inspired Thomas Hine’s personal reflection on his teenage years and those of his generation. Like most baby-boomers, they spent most of their adolescence trying to define themselves and their generation, and to understand the commonality shared by this lack of identity encompassed in the quote above. When do teens feel they belong? Why do they feel they don’t belong? How are these ideas different today than they were 40 years ago? How has time and location affected this idea?

These are some of the questions that will be explored during our newest teen internship project, Teen Miami. Although Hine’s wrote the quote above for his high school assignment in the 1960s, these words still ring true today. This chasm was evident during my teenage experience growing up in Miami during the 1990s and is still echoed today with some of the teenagers I speak to about Teen Miami.

Once such example happened a couple of weeks ago when I was invited to speak to a group of teenagers about our project. I always prepare what I am going to say in order to deliver my message as effectively as possible … or so I thought. On this particular day, I was thrown back with a question by a young lady in the audience, after I planned my delivery, passed out materials, encouraged an open and constructive dialogue where others participated, she raised her hand and asked, “Not to be rude or go against your mission or anything, but why would anyone care about teenagers? Why are we so important?”

At this point, as you may imagine, I started thinking I didn’t plan my message as effectively as I thought, if she hasn’t gotten the point. Despite having felt this way in my own teenage years, 15 years later I was startled at her question, and it immediately made me realize the complexity and weight of her reasoning. So I started reevaluating my approach and realized maybe this is a common feeling among other teens in the room, school, neighborhood, city, state and world, independent of whatever I would’ve said in that library on that day.

So I took her question and gave it to the group to answer. Why would we, the Historical Museum of Southern Florida (HMSF), create a teen program where teenagers would come to the museum and document and research teen life across generations in South Florida? Some teens retributively answered her; others didn’t know what to say even though they were nodding their heads throughout my presentation; others supported her question. Why? Why? Why?

After seeing the response from her fellow classmates, I tried answering her with some fodder about the teenage years being your “glory” years and that they shape your life in so many ways and stressed a common sentiment among all teens from different generations … yada yada yada. Ultimately, she looked at me with the same confused look and I said, “I would encourage you to try to answer this question in your creative piece. Ask yourself this question, ask others this question both your own age and adults, see where your search takes you and then present what you find.”

I can only imagine the look on her face could only compare to the look of relief on Columbus’ face when his sailors saw land for the first time on his maiden voyage. It was that incredible look of relief that said, I know where to go from here, which gets to the heart of the program. Although, her question was a pretty loaded one, with so many possible answers, it was understood she should take the journey to seek and find these answers out for herself.

 Overall, this is what Teen Miami seeks to do; to provide the tools and develop the skills to guide the teens through this process of self-discovery. This project bridges that disconnect from a sense of alienation, common to all teens, to a feeling of empowerment in an otherwise confusing period. Although, the program will encompass museology, study researching and archiving procedures, exhibition building/design, mediation and team building at its core is the idea of finding where you belong and where you are going by building content and researching teen history of South Florida.

If anything, I would hope my answer would engage the young lady that asked me that question, and encouraged her to become part of history by documenting others, and, by doing so, finding the importance of her identity as a teen, Miamian and South Floridian.

-- Mariela Rossel, Teen Miami Coordinator

Illustrating Justice

I had the privilege of working with Shirley Henderson in curating Illustrating Justice, an exhibition of courtroom drawings that spans her thirty years of work in this field. You may recognize her work from nightly network news broadcasts and newspapers; that is because media outlets commission her to go into federal courtrooms and sketch scenes that cameras, by law, are not allowed to capture.

Henderson was incredibly interesting to work with because she knows so many of the individuals who make justice work in Miami, as well as a number of those who have passed through the justice system. While we were working to choose the 93 pieces that are on display in Illustrating Justice, she told me some of her stories about folks like Alcee Hastings, Ted Bundy, Yahweh Ben Yahweh, Raul Martinez, and Alex Daoud.

Illustrating Justice: The Courtroom Art of Shirley Henderson will be on display at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida until June 20, 2010. There you can see her work and learn more about the process of creating them. If you’d like to hear some of those stories straight from Ms. Henderson herself, you can do so on June 17. She will be talking about her experiences as part of HMSF’s Explore History & Culture Series from 6:30 to 8:30.

-- Robert Harkins, Assistant Curator, Object Collections

The Educational Empire of Historia

In the fall of 2008, my dear friend M worked at the Miami Art Museum. The education team across the plaza at MAM is smaller than ours is, and during an afternoon of comic conversation at MAM, they formed an empire.

Well, M suggested that we form an empire as well, and that we have "cultural exchanges," such as private tours of new exhibitions for each other and the sharing of programming details for our family events.

Our education department quickly rose to this comic challenge and came up with, not only an empire, but titles for ourselves, a coat of arms and a flag! I designed the flag and coat of arms at home one night, and “my subjects” approved them.

The Educational Empire of Historia is made up of:

• Empress of Historia – who is in charge of the department;
• Grand Duchess of George – who is in charge of Dr. George’s tours;
• Duke of Craftonia - who is in charge of all family programs and creative projects;
• Baroness of Academia - who is in charge of booking school programs;
• Duchessa de Curricula - who is in charge of all curriculum;
• Grand Duke of Eds - who is in charge of the museum educators;
• Lady Retailia – who is in charge of the gift shop.

At MAM they have flag and motto. They also have royal titles, but I am not free to release those.

I love museum folk and our culture!!

-- Cecilia Dubon Slesnick, VP Education a.k.a. Empress of Historia