Raising up untold stories: David Ruggles Center nears fundraising goal for exhibit overhaul

The David Ruggles Center for History and Education hopes to look very different this time next year.

The center, a museum in Florence that highlights the village’s abolitionist history, is just a few thousand dollars away from reaching a fundraising goal that will allow it to overhaul its exhibits in early 2027.

“We’re in a historical moment where we really feel this story needs to be told now, and we want to bring in a wider audience, and we want to make this history accessible to more people,” said education coordinator Tom Goldscheider, “and these exhibits will help us do that.”

The museum received an $87,500 Cultural Facilities Fund Capital Grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council a few months ago, and the grant has to be matched dollar for dollar before any work can begin. A 2023 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) grant from the city of Northampton made it possible for the museum to hire Michael Hanke of Design Division, Inc., to create a conceptual design for the new exhibits.

“They’re experienced, they’re knowledgeable, they’re kind… they’re the ideal client, in my mind,” Hanke said.

Their goal is for work to start in January or February and for most of it to be complete by next October, with a possible grand opening in the spring of 2028, Goldscheider said.

“We want our museum to tell the stories of everyday people, not just the well-known people. Sojourner was well-known — David Ruggles, not so much — but William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, they’re well-known. But it was everyday people that were doing this work and making a difference and fighting slavery, so we want to tell all those stories,” said Kim Gerould, co-chair of the fundraising campaign and a member of the museum board.

Once the new exhibits are in place, guests will begin their visit in the “Welcome Space” at the back of the venue, accessed by a ramp on the side of the building. That room will introduce them to the basics: the history of American slavery and abolitionism; the key abolitionist figures that the museum spotlights, including Sojourner Truth, David Ruggles and Lydia Maria Child; a historic map of Florence; and the layout of the rest of the museum.

Other rooms will be dedicated to individual historical figures. In the David Ruggles Room, guests can pull out drawers from a vintage desk to read copies of “The Mirror of Liberty,” the magazine Ruggles published. In the Sojourner Truth Exhibit Room, guests can look at a first edition of her autobiography as they stand near a life-size cutout photo of Truth “speaking” the quote, “I have been beaten, mocked and oppressed, but I will rise above it all and shine like the sun.”

Nearby will be a room dedicated to the Northampton Association of Education and Industry (NAEI), the utopian community that operated across the street from where the museum now stands. The room will feature a seasonal display with live silkworms spinning silk cocoons. A space that’s currently a hallway will become an exhibit about the Black community in Florence at the time, featuring an interactive element — either a flipbook or a touchscreen — with more information about the named residents.

“The history of all people is important, and we’ve done a pretty good job of telling the history of white people, especially white people who are more affluent. But these stories are not well-known, and it’s our job to raise up these stories,” Gerould said. “It’s important at all levels, but locally, I feel like it’s really important because when children come here and learn these stories, they’re blown away… I remember a little boy in front of Sojourner’s house, and he was about to cry. He was like, ‘She lived here?’”

Though the new exhibits will still, of course, have interpretive panels, the goals of the redesign included adding more objects and making everything more readable and accessible overall. The museum will still be “the old house,” Gerould said. “We want it to be the old house. But it’ll have more color. It’ll be easier to read, won’t be so text-heavy. It’ll be more coherent.”

“We’ve done what we can as amateurs, what you see here, and we have a really compelling history. We have great, powerful images, and we have great quotes, language and text to work with. We have an embarrassment of riches, really, and now we are honing that,” said Goldscheider.

On the afternoon of Oct. 22, the David Ruggles Center held an open house to preview the new exhibits and encourage visitors to donate. In each room, they displayed a different page of their interpretive plan to show what that room will look like post-update.

The Ujima Singers, an Afrocentric music collective based out of the Northampton Community Music Center, sang two songs about freedom, and Professor Ousmane Power-Greene spoke to the crowd about the significance of the space and the importance of the exhibit overhaul.

“We want to be able to extend the work. We want to be able to update the collection. We want to be able to really think even bigger than what we’ve been able to do, and that’s the goal. But the goal is always first to situate a community,” he said.

After the remarks, guests continued to walk around the space and talk with “Rugglers,” as Gerould called them.

“We’re grateful for the community coming out and showing us support, and we look forward to sharing it with people,” Goldscheider said. “We’ve got our work cut out for us.”

For more information about the David Ruggles Center or to make a donation, visit davidrugglescenter.org.