Preserving Connecticut’s History

By Alex Dueben / Photos by Samantha Skeels

“In 1825, there was this awareness that the nation was approaching the 50th anniversary of the American Revolution, and, by gosh, kids these days don’t know their history. We need a historical society,” Ilene Frank said with a laugh, giving an abbreviated account of the origins of the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History. 

Formerly the Connecticut Historical Society, the Museum celebrated its 200th anniversary last year. This year, Frank, who has worked at the museum for more than a decade, takes over as the museum’s new Executive Director and CEO, and we sat down in her office to talk about her life and work. “I lovingly blame my career on my mother.” 

“I was sixteen, and I was home in the summer and somehow there was a car at home. I decided I could take the car, drive to Metro, go downtown, visit some museums, and I’d be home before my mom and my stepdad found out. Well, I completely misjudged time, and so I had to call my mom on a payphone from the basement of the National Art Gallery. The way my mom tells the story is that in that moment, she was so, so angry that I took the car without permission. At the same time, she was like, ‘my daughter went to a museum,’” Frank said laughing.

“I’ve always loved history. I think part of that is because I’m Jewish, and so much of the religion is looking at the history of the Israelites. Even the stories that in the sacred texts are historical, to a point. I was always really fascinated with genealogy and my family’s history,” Frank said.

“I love the moment when a visitor or a student or a participant in a program makes this connection to their own life. When individuals see documents or artifacts related to their own family members, that is a powerful, powerful moment. Or, there’s a story, a personal narrative from someone in the past, and they realize that their life has similarities. Or, that it’s so different that it makes them appreciate their life in a different way. That is such a treasured experience,” Frank said.

“One of the things that has changed in my ten-and-a-half years is really focusing in on the power of personal narrative. Whether that’s narrative that we can get from the past through diaries, letters, other forms of account. But also today, personal narrative and oral history. We’re so blessed that we have technology that can capture someone’s voice.” That focus on personal narrative, which can be seen in the Community History Project, a large-scale oral history project the museum launched during COVID, and in the ways that many of the exhibitions and events have sought to tell stories about the community. For Frank this is a natural outgrowth of how the museum has always been at the forefront of collecting, and she repeatedly talked about museum employees and the creativity of all the departments, and that these ideas and concerns are embedded in how they work, which has led to the current exhibition “Drawn Here” and the publication of a children’s book last year, written and drawn by members of the Education Department.

“We were one of the first museums and historical societies in the nation that collected objects, not just documents. We very early on collected objects related to women,  which was uncommon for some of the other older historical societies. It’s a really interesting mashup of being founded with elite intention, by elite members of society, but these attempts in an 1825 mindset of being small D democratic. If that’s our foundation, then we have a responsibility to really be intentional.”

Frank becomes animated when she talked about this aspect of her job, and about the museum’s work. “I say this over and over, but museum collections are influenced by the people making the decisions about what to collect. Are you only collecting things that you’re interested in? 

Let’s talk politics. Are you only interested in collecting things that represent your political view? Sometimes you have to make sure that you’re collecting the other side of an issue, whether you personally agree with it or not. If the historical record is going to even attempt to be representational, then that is a very active form of collecting.”

“I think of this one ledger book that we’ve had since probably the late 1800s in our collection. It was from an attorney. It’s a listing of all his accounts,” Frank said of one of the more 4.7 million objects in the museum’s collections. “But what’s interesting is that Seth Terry represented the African Religious Society, which became Talcott Congregational Church, the oldest black Congregational church in Connecticut, which is now Faith Congregational.”

“He also held in escrow the funds that Thomas Gallaudet collected with Prince Abduhl, who was a man from Africa who was enslaved, secured his freedom, and then went on a speaking tour in New England to raise funds to buy the freedom of his family members. So, all of a sudden, this same ledger book becomes this amazing document of African American history. It was not collected for that reason, but you ask a different question of the same object, and it gives you a different answer,” Frank said.

“That’s why history is interpretation and its perspective. There are facts. Seth Terry lived. He was a lawyer. Those facts don’t change, but what you get out of his story can change.”

Moving to Connecticut

Frank had worked at various museums before coming to Connecticut, but had spent years in upstate New York, at the Cooperstown Graduate Program in museum studies, and working at museums in Schenectady and Troy. “It was a great opportunity, but personally, it impacted my relationship. Darlene thankfully said, okay, let’s try this long-distance thing,” Frank said. “We were long distance for about two years. I still don’t know how it worked out, but miraculously we saw each other every weekend. Either I went to New York or she came here, or we met up sometimes in the Berkshires.”

We joked about being “forced” to spend a lot of time in the Berkshires, but Frank still seemed a little amazed that they made their relationship work, and at the end of it, got married. “Darlene was able to work remotely two days a week, so she was here longer, and then eventually got a full-time job in Connecticut.”

“As a younger person, I remember telling my mom I was going to go do this crazy thing of working in museums. She was like, but what if you have to move for a job? I was like, mom, I make friends. It’s going to be fine. Don’t worry about it. That’s true in your twenties. I moved here in my forties, and it was a little bit harder. I’m not doing the bar scene. I don’t have children. So, I wasn’t meeting adults that way. It took a while to find community. But eventually we did. We’re pretty active at Congregation Beth Israel in West Hartford. We found an amazing community there. Eventually we found our people,” Frank said. “Connecticut’s been a really good home.”

Over time Frank’s job has become less about the hands-on planning of exhibits and more “macro,” and she admitted this is something that she’s enjoyed, but has required an adjustment. “I was hired as chief curator, but from the beginning, I oversaw education exhibitions and the collection. I used to tell people that when you’re a visitor, the moment you walk in the door to everything you experience until you walk out of the door is what I am in charge of. From a visitor perspective, it’s the objects you see on view, how they’re interpreted and displayed, the programs that are put on. I wasn’t in charge of our grounds or the parking lot or the HVAC system or even fundraising. And now as I become a CEO, it’s everything.”

“But everything is needed because just like any organism, it’s all connected. If we don’t have the funds, we can’t do any of the mission-related work. If our building and grounds aren’t maintained, we can’t serve the public. And so, I really see the interconnectedness of all the various departments that are at the museum.”

When I asked about the changing nature of her job and finding creativity as her new role, Frank taught me the Yiddish word “nachas.”

“It’s a mixture of joy and pride. It’s usually reserved for like when you see your children or your grandchildren do something that’s really amazing, you’re filled with nachas. I get filled with nachas when my staff does something amazing. They know this about me. Not that I’m their parent–thank God,” Frank added with a laugh, “But I do. As CEO, I hope to run a museum and have a positive culture and provide resources and space so that the staff can pursue things that they want to achieve. And that in turn gives me nachas.”