Bellevue Passage Museum Presenting at Vernacular Architecture Forum 2024 Conference in Michigan
We are thrilled to be part of the Vernacular Architecture Forum (VAF) 2024 Conference in Michigan. This esteemed event highlights the importance of vernacular architecture, bringing together scholars, students, and community members to explore and celebrate diverse cultural landscapes.
In July 2022 and July 2023, in collaboration with Washington College’s Center for Environment and Society and the Village of Bellevue, Maryland, we conducted field schools sponsored by the University of Virginia/Vernacular Architecture Forum’s African American Field School Initiative, funded by the Mellon Foundation. Our participation in the VAF 2024 Conference includes a roundtable discussion titled "Documenting Black Life in Bellevue: Past and Present Visions of an African American Cultural Landscape Along the Chesapeake." Moderated by Michael J. Chiarappa and Janet Sheridan, including former Field School students Marcus Smith and Ebram Victoria, along with Kat DeShields-Moon, BPM Director of Programming. This discussion will highlight the impact of community engagement and the potential for future field schools in cultural conservation and identity preservation. See below for the full roundtable description.
Furthermore, we are also participating in the VAF President’s Plenary Session on Saturday, June 15, at noon (Eastern). This session will offer insights from the first three years of the Mellon-funded VAF/UVA field schools, emphasizing African American places and engaging Black communities, scholars, and students. The session will be available to view via Zoom.
We remain committed to preserving and celebrating our African American cultural landscape. We look forward to engaging with fellow VAF conference participants, sharing our journey, and continuing our mission to document and honor the rich heritage of Bellevue, Maryland.
“1.2: Roundtable Discussion, Documenting Black Life in Bellevue: Past and Present Visions of an African American Cultural Landscape Along the Chesapeake
Moderators: Michael J. Chiarappa, Center for Environment and Society, Washington College; Janet Sheridan, Down Jersey Heritage; Kathryn DeShields, Village of Bellevue Resident and Board Member, Bellevue Passage Museum
During July 2022 and July 2023, Washington College’s Center for Environment and Society, the Bellevue Passage Museum, and the Village of Bellevue, Maryland conducted field schools sponsored by the University of Virginia/Vernacular Architecture Forum’s African American Field School Initiative funded by the Mellon Foundation. These field schools trained students to use the venue’s cultural landscape to advance historical understanding and cultural conservation of an African American community whose aspirations and development were shaped by the Chesapeake estuarine environment. Students also became deeply involved in the process of community engagement, gaining ethnographic insight into how cultural landscapes serve as a constant, everyday source of local identity and memory. This roundtable discussion will provide reflections from field school students and staff—a working discussion that seeks to build on the potential of such field schools and community engagement in the future.
Led by field school co-directors Michael Chiarappa, Ph.D. and Janet Sheridan, M.A. and community coordinators Drs. Dennis and Mary DeShields, students were immersed in Bellevue’s historical/cultural resources and its contemporary cultural life. Residing and working in Bellevue for four weeks, students learned the skills required to document cultural landscapes—measuring, drawing, and photographing buildings, using historic documents and visual materials, and conducting oral histories with long-time residents. Complementing these approaches, students were introduced to new methodologies that employ geographic information systems (mapping) and digital technology that serve to gather and utilize information that can be used to present Bellevue’s history and its cultural significance along the Chesapeake Bay. The materials generated through these exercises is being used to create history exhibits and public programming for the Bellevue Passage Museum, as well as serving as resources for other African American heritage initiatives in the region. In addition to these outcomes, the field school exercises contributed to the design of a web-based presence for the museum and the community’s wider history, along with providing greater vision for how such documentary work can facilitate cultural conservation and community identity in Bellevue. Participants in this panel will include:
Marcus Smith, University of Massachusetts, Amherst: During this roundtable, I intend to discuss and contribute the following: (1) My experience as a two-time attendee of Black Life in Bellevue Field School and its contribution to my development as a Black Studies scholar and public historian whose work and research concern the historic preservation, documentation, and interpretation of Black communities, cultural landscapes, and historic sites. (2) My dissertation research focuses on how grassroots museums while preserving local history and celebrating cultural heritage, can operate as dynamic sites for education, social mobilization, and cultural revival as institutions that shape community identities, foster social cohesion, advocate for social change, and politically empower residents. In the context of Bellevue, I will discuss the necessity of landscape and placed-based study in both acquiring content for the development of grassroots museums and how methodologies such as oral history contribute to giving meaning to space and place.
Ebram Victoria, Morgan State University: When taken as a trilogy; methods, materials, and context, we can learn how to create a sustainable future from the survival skills of our African American ancestors. Though much has been disregarded, a rich supply of information remains buried deep in the memory banks and oral histories of the living elders. A cautionary warning: with each day, we step further away. We need to stop moving and go backwards; back towards the source of the knowledge. By astute discernment of necessity, an active practice of moderation, and a commitment to re-sowing seeds, generations of African Americans since emancipation have gone on to excel. We have moved strides, inconveniently away from subsistence knowledge. Like a garden unattended, without the maintenance of this crucial historical heritage, future generations are at risk of forgetting how to survive. The way back must be illuminated as the way forward. Now the purpose, as a preservationist and conservationist designer, is to recycle and reuse the legacy of survival until it literally dissolves back to the soil as a sort of slow-release fertilizer, and contributes to the vitality of the next generation. The need now is sustaining what has sustained us, both material and immaterial. It’s time to “pre-serve”, meaning service in advance, thus intentionally keeping things in-tact for future generations.
Monica T. Davis, Bellevue Passage Museum: For far too long, the history and contributions of African Americans to our country have not been at the forefront of our consciousness, awareness, and education. The historic Village of Bellevue, founded as an African American maritime community, is combating these omissions and working to create a collective community narrative that empowers its historical representation and cultural conservation. When communities are left without organization, resources, and leadership to fight against encroachment on their homes, material heritage, and public access to nature and recreation, historians and preservationists need to assume the responsibility to explore people’s lives and trace their family history. Through oral histories, archival research, and architectural documentation, the field school not only uncovered what once was Bellevue, but also recorded and preserved the stories of the Bellevue that is and will continue to be. Serving as the Director of the Bellevue Passage Museum, it is my responsibility to cultivate critical pedagogy within exhibits and conversations.”