Tag Archives: Department of Parks Heritage and Tourism

The African American experience in Hot Springs is focus of Old State House Museum Brown Bag lecture today

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Join the Old State House Museum on Thursday, Sept. 19, from 12 to 1 p.m., as Tom Hill discusses the origins and history of Hot Springs National Park, the first area in the United States to be federally protected for its natural features, with a particular emphasis on the experiences of African Americans.

Tom Hill is the curator at Hot Springs National Park. Born and raised in Hot Springs, he earned a bachelor’s in physics from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, a bachelor’s in history from Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, and a master’s in museum studies from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. He moved back to Hot Springs in 2011 after working for nine years as curator at Hill Aerospace Museum at Hill Air Force Base in Utah. Before working in public history, Hill spent 14 years in the aerospace industry.

Sandwich in History at Ferncliff Camp today

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You are invited to join the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program’s next “Sandwiching in History” tour, which will visit Ferncliff Camp and Conference Center at 1720 Ferncliff Road in Little Rock beginning at noon on Friday, September 6, 2019.

Currently sitting on approximately 1,200 acres, Ferncliff Camp and Conference Center began in the 1920s as a camp for some of Little Rock’s prominent families. Since the 1930s, the facility has been a camp and conference center owned by the Presbyterian Church (PCUSA). Ferncliff Camp and Conference Center offers retreat and meeting facilities along with recreational facilities and hiking trails.

Sandwiching in History tours are worth one hour of AIA continuing education credit. If you would like to receive email notifications of upcoming tours instead of postcards or need additional information, please contact Callie Williams, Education and Outreach Coordinator for AHPP, at 501-324-9880 or Callie.Williams@arkansas.gov.

 

South Words, a new author series, is announced by OXFORD AMERICAN

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The Oxford American is pleased to announce South Words, a new author series at Ron Robinson Theater (100 River Market Ave., Little Rock, AR 72201) featuring renowned OA contributors.

The inaugural season features Sarah M. Broom, author of The Yellow House (Tuesday, October 15, 2019); Van Jensen and Nate Powell, author and illustrator of Two Dead (Tuesday, November 19, 2019); Silas House, author of Southernmost (Tuesday, February 25, 2019); and Leesa Cross-Smith, author of So We Can Glow: Stories (Tuesday, March 31, 2020). At each event, the author will read from his or her work, then be interviewed onstage by a moderator. The events, all of which are free and open to the public, begin at 6:30 PM, with the doors opening at 6 PM. Books will be for sale onsite and authors will participate in a signing.

The presenting sponsor for South Words is the College of Fine Arts & Communication at the University of Central Arkansas. The series is presented in partnership with the CALS Six Bridges Book Festival. Additional season partners include the Clinton School of Public Service, Villa Vue at SOMA, the Arkansas Arts Council, and the Department of Parks, Heritage, and Tourism

The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom, who published an essay called “A Yellow House in New Orleans” in the Oxford American’s Spring 2008 issue, is a memoir set in a shotgun house in New Orleans East. The book was published on August 13, 2019, to wide acclaim, including from New York Times critic Dwight Garner, who called it “a major book that I suspect will come to be considered among the essential memoirs” of the decade. In a cover feature in the New York Times Book Review on August 11, Angela Flourney wrote: “[The Yellow House] is an instantly essential text, examining the past, present and possible future . . . of America writ large.” The conversation with Broom will be moderated by KaToya Ellis Fleming, the OA’s 2019-20 Jeff Baskin Fellow.

Little Rock native Nate Powell, the artist of the #1 New York Times bestselling and National Book Award-winning illustrated trilogy March, has said, “I’m always eager to bring my home state to life through comics, and each book doubles as a love letter to Arkansas in all its contradictory beauty.” His next book, Two Dead, a Little Rock noir set in the 1940s, is a collaboration with author Van Jensen, a former crime reporter at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The South Words event with Powell and Jensen will occur on the book’s November 19 publication date. A 16-page excerpt from Two Dead was published in the Oxford American’s Fall 2019 issue. The conversation with Powell and Jensen will be moderated OA Senior Editor Jay Jennings, author of Carry the Rock.

Silas House is a frequent New York Times contributor and the nationally bestselling author of six novels, including Southernmost, which was published in June 2018 and long-listed for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and named a best book of the year by Booklist, the Advocate, Garden & Gun, Southern Living, and Paste. Excerpted on OxfordAmerican.org, Southernmost is the story of evangelical preacher Asher Sharp, who offers shelter to two gay men after a flood in a small Tennessee town. The conversation with House will be moderated by Seth Pennington, editor-in-chief of Sibling Rivalry Press.

Leesa Cross-Smith made her Oxford American debut in 2017 with “Ain’t Half Bad,” her widely read essay about Sturgill Simpson for the Kentucky music issue; in 2018, she was a regular contributor to The By and By, the OA’s online story series. She is the author of Whiskey & Ribbons (longlisted for the 2018 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and listed among Oprah Magazine’s “Top Books of Summer”), Every Kiss a War, and So We Can Glow, a collection of forty-two short stories forthcoming from Grand Central Press on March 10, 2020. The conversation with Cross-Smith will be moderated by OA contributing editor Kevin Brockmeier, who is the author, most recently, of A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip: A Memoir of Seventh Grade.

For more information about South Words, visit OxfordAmerican.org/events

Happy 78th Birthday to Historic Arkansas Museum

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78 years ago today (July 19, 1941), Louise Loughborough presided over the opening of a restored original Little Rock city half-block.  A member of Little Rock’s Planning Commission, she had become concerned about plans to demolish a half-block of dilapidated historic homes—the last remnant of Little Rock’s oldest neighborhood

While the buildings were in desperate need of repair and restoration, they were not yet too far gone to be saved. Using her politically astute skills, she worked with the federal, state, and city governments to get funding and labor to restore the buildings.  They opened at the Arkansas Territorial Restoration.

Over the years, the project grew. It became more than just a historical recreation of bygone days. It became a true museum which celebrated not only Arkansas during its territorial heyday but also the history and culture since then.  Additional historic structures have been relocated to land adjacent to the original property to showcase what rural territorial life in Arkansas was like.

In 1981, the organization became the first history museum in Arkansas to be accredited by the American Association of Museums. The museum was renamed the Historic Arkansas Museum (lovingly shortened to HAM) in 2001 to reflect its expanded facility and mission. At that time, it also opened expanded and new galleries.

Today, HAM continues to thrive as it tells the story of Arkansas’ past, but also the state’s present.

Sandwich in History today at War Memorial Stadium

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You are invited to join the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program’s next “Sandwiching in History” tour, which will visit the War Memorial Stadium at 1 Stadium Drive in Little Rock beginning at noon on Friday, July 12th, 2019.

Note: We will gather inside gate 9, which is adjacent to the stadium’s administrative offices, which face Markham Street to the north. Please park in the lot along the western edge of the stadium. We will walk the interior circumference of the stadium on our tour.

War Memorial Stadium, completed in 1948, was designed as not only a large-scale sports venue for the city of Little Rock, but also a living memorial to Arkansas’s veterans and fallen soldiers. With an initial seating capacity of just over 31,000, the stadium today can hold more than 54,000 spectators. War Memorial Stadium has hosted over 200 Razorback football games, as well as many other Arkansas collegiate and high school teams and even an NFL game. The stadium has also hosted soccer games, major concerts and famous entertainers throughout its 70-year history.

Sandwiching in History tours are worth one hour of AIA continuing education credit. If you would like to receive email notifications of upcoming tours instead of postcards or need additional information, please contact Callie Williams, Education and Outreach Coordinator for AHPP, at 501-324-9880 or Callie.Williams@arkansas.gov.

Lunch and Learn at Mosaic Templars Cultural Center today at noon

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As part of their ongoing Lunch and Learn series, Mosaic Templars Cultural Center today presents: “Off the Grid: A History of Nature, Black Power and Freedom on the Arkansas Frontier.”

The program starts at 12 noon at Mosaic Templars Cultural Center and is free.

Through images, stories and botanical specimens, historian Story Matkin-Rawn and ecologist Theo Witsell will share their research on the challenges of frontier life and use of wild resources among African Americans in the natural state.