(ethereal music) (gentle piano playing) (birds twittering) (water rushing in distance) (gentle piano music continues) (birds twittering) - We have all the people here in a way, we have all the characters, we have the full story of how America was crafted on the ground, all the messy details.

And so when you just look at an artwork on its own, it can tell you a lot, and it's very beautiful.

But when you look at an artwork in the context in which it was made, I think you just get a lot bigger, richer picture of how that art came about, what it means, the context is kind of everything.

We have a really unique opportunity in historic house museums to show that whole big household, the whole big range of people that made the country happen.

(calm music) (music fades) My goal as a historian and especially one who focuses on New York State, is really to inspire people to ask more questions.

I want people to read about race relations and gender relations, and to think about how that may have looked and felt in, say, 1820, in their own community.

And then think about what our values are today about family and economic success or education, even about our neighbors.

And in looking at the past say, oh, these aren't players who are so disconnected from our same values today.

They're people who are living in their time with the practice of slavery in part of the country, with emancipation rolling out really unevenly in other parts of the country with race relations really being hardened into a racial hierarchy during this period, with Indigenous populations all over the state still moving in and moving through and asking and demanding for some respect.

And women saying, wait, we're doing a lot of work here.

(laughs) Right?

We are really the backbone of American families regardless of what your racial or ethnic background is.

And so I want people to start to ask those questions and say, well, a person like me, my story is just as relevant as the next story, and I want to know how mine and someone else's connect in, say, 1834.

(indistinct chatter) - When one thing is like always being kind of open to critical interpretations and remaining critical too, understanding that these, like historic figures can be incredibly important historically, but also fallible, and I think important to hold are historic figures to the moral standards of today also.

I mean, and reckoning with that history for sure.

Yeah, and I think it's also sourcing your information and knowledge from those groups of people who were most affected by some of these courses of history, that really gives you the kind of full-bodied view of the movement and what it implied and how it's affected us.

Because for a very long time, of course, we had art history has been this sort of like imperial and colonial and mainly White disciplined.

And it's the only way that we kind of break out of that is the inclusivity of, like, other perspectives and voices too.

The more the merrier, I think.

The more perspective and the more critical lenses, the better, and we're seeing that now.

- In what ways do we have things in common with others?

How do we find that?

And then how do we present it so people can see that there's a longer history in the United States to not only omitting some people's stories, but also if we start to put them into place, we can better understand the world we live in today.

We can start to trace back some of those kind of isms that everybody's challenged with.

And we can also find ways that people work together in the past that haven't been unearthed yet.

(gentle ethereal music) - We survived, my ancestors survived so that I can sit here, and parents survived so they could raise their children.

People went underground, you know, hid their language and hid their religion so they could secretly pass it on.

So traditions still lived, it just lived underground.

And because of that, because of those brave people who held onto language, religion, culture, all of that, we're able to still see remnants of it today.

So we survived.

(gentle ethereal music) - I am hoping that we have shown people that the history has a lot to tell us about today, and I'm hoping that people come away with a feeling that they too have agency in their world.

Thomas Cole tried to change the world with his paintings.

He tried to change people's hearts, and one person can make a really big impact on the world.

Every person has that opportunity, whether it's through art, writing, just being a person in the world interacting.

I think I feel that inspiration when I'm here, that I have the ability to go out into the world and make a change in the world as I hope that everyone else feels too.

(gentle ethereal music) (ethereal melody) - Sponsored, in part by Albany Medical Health Systems and by Robert and Doris Fischer Malesardi.

(gentle ethereal music) - I think it's important to reframe these stories simply because it makes a more equitable space in the museum field.

I think historic sites have so much potential in that they can and they should serve the local community first, essentially.

You know, I think that you want visitors to feel welcome and you want the history to feel accessible and you want to tell the full story because it's important.

And I think that if we don't investigate Cole's work outside of what was going on in his era and in the 1830s and 40s and the years before and after, you know, it's really a disservice to the people who were also living in that time to all the events and... Yeah, really complex narratives that were going on then.