UT professor helps with Smithsonian exhibit
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – A University of Tennessee, Knoxville, professor has been involved in a Smithsonian exhibit that looks at the lives of people who lived in a Massachusetts home for almost 200 years.
Associate history professor Christopher Magra helped the Division of Home and Community Life in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History revise the exhibit and reconstruct the work life of a slave who had lived in the house.
The Smithsonian Institution bought the home in 1963 and reassembled it inside the museum.
Magra says he was contacted because of his book, “The Fisherman’s Cause.” The owner of the Massachusetts home had leased a slave in order to “make fish,” and Magra was needed to help reconstruct the slave’s work life.
Magra also recorded a script for different areas of the exhibit.
