“Independence on Martha’s Vineyard: Then, Now, and Forever” is the brainchild of Norah Van Riper, consulting historian, who cooked up the concept in partnership with the Vineyard Preservation Trust as part of its celebration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the U.S. on July 4, 1776. Van Riper says, “I love having directly in the exhibition title that we’re talking about American ideals of independence and freedom in the past, present, and even into the future.”
Last summer, Van Riper worked as a local historian at the art installation “Our Golden Hours” at the Preservation Trust’s Vincent House, one of the oldest homes on the Vineyard, circa 1672. “I really started thinking about the stories a pre–Revolutionary War era house could tell. I said, ‘I think we can do something unprecedented for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration.’”
Van Riper continues, “The story we really want to tell is multilayered. It begins with the events leading up to and surrounding the American Revolution here on the Island. Throughout the exhibit, the emphasis is on how broader global events impacted us. We are not as isolated as we are sometimes made out to be. And our neutrality during the war has not been standing up to hard scrutiny.”
As you move through the house, each room shifts forward 50 years — all the way to 2076.
Van Riper points out that even before the Revolution ended, people were already quarreling about its meaning and how the narrative of those events should be told. By 1826, sectionalism and partisan politics debated whether the Declaration or the Constitution was more important, because the way it was presented would favor one party’s cause over that of the other. “We know about the history of the Revolution through the prism of all the interpretations that have happened in the last 250 years,” says Van Riper. “We will never be able to tell the ‘pure’ story of the Revolution, because even John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, when they were exchanging letters about how to tell this history, said, ‘We can’t.’” As a result, Van Riper has chosen to focus on popular memory and how that has shaped this year’s celebrations.
Along with interpretive labels, the entire exhibit will be immersive and interactive, allowing visitors to learn through investigation and exploration. Van Riper explains, “You will open the drawers, read the letters, try on the clothes in the closet, and play the games to get a sense of what life was like at each of those intervals. It will be like a treasure hunt.”
Since the entire exhibition will be hands-on and there is no climate control in the historically accurate Vincent House, the artifacts can’t come from museum collections. Instead, Van Riper has been hard at work sourcing items from our thrift stores, Facebook’s “MV Stuff for Sale” page, flea markets, yard sales, loans, and donations.
For the 300th-anniversary section, Van Riper is fashioning a small room as a time capsule, where people can leave their remarks about their hopes and dreams for what America and the Vineyard will be like 50 years hence. She says, “These will be sealed in a box at the end of the exhibit, and hopefully we’ll be opening it up in 50 years to see what did and didn’t come true.”
Van Riper wants visitors to realize that history is far more complex than we tend to believe. “It’s not a straight line or a single narrative. Who’s telling the story absolutely shapes it. And that’s been true for as long as human beings have been telling narratives about the past, because they shape our identity as Islanders, Americans, and citizens of the world.”
“Independence on Martha’s Vineyard: Then, Now, and Forever” opens Memorial Day weekend, and will be open Wednesday through Saturday, 11 am to 2 pm. Docents will be on hand for questions. Starting June 16, visitors can meet the curator, Norah Van Riper, on Tuesdays from 10 am to 2 pm. Vincent House, 99 Main St., Edgartown. For more information, visit vineyardtrust.org.