The East Hampton Library’s Long Island Collection presents a new series of themed pop-up mini exhibits, running on select Thursdays from 4 to 7 PM, beginning March 28.
“Men’s Lives/Long Island Fishermen Project” will be displayed on March 28. This exhibition features rarely seen and non-reproducible photographs from the Men’s Lives Photo Archive/Long Island Fishermen Project, oral histories collected as part of the Maritime Folklife Oral History Collection, and items from the East Hampton Town Baymen’s Association files.
Thursday, May 16, is “Gardiner’s Island,” July 18 is “The Culper Spy Ring,” September 19 is “Whaling,” and December 5 is “Home Sweet Home.”
In describing the new series, Andrea Meyer, head of the Long Island Collection, stated, “Just as you may walk into a gourmet cheese shop, and know you like cheese but not really know what to get, we have a lot of people who come into the Long Island Collection who are interested in local history, but don’t really have a clear handle on what they would like to see or how to go about connecting with some of the really special materials we have here. The goal is that by creating something more informal than a full exhibit, we can interact with our visitors more. We’ve designed this series of pop-up exhibits to highlight items related to some of the most popular topics that people often ask about but may find it to be a little overwhelming to try to sift through on their own, and we’re hoping this will encourage people to come back and explore a little bit more, once they understand the range of materials we have here. My hope is that getting a taste of the range of materials we have, people will come back looking to see more of these items; whether they’re interested in the note about the birth of his daughter in Lion Gardiner’s 1599 bible, or they’re interested in oral histories and videos of the fishing community working with haul seine nets.”