Photograph by Kevin A. Roberts
When was the last time you were at the Eugene Field House & St. Louis Toy Museum? How ’bout the Campbell House Museum? Or The Griot Museum of Black History & Culture? Don’t be embarrassed if your answers are “never,” or something even less committal (i.e., “I have no idea what those places are.”)
Barbara Decker understands.
Decker is the force behind the Urban Museum Collaborative, a joint venture to promote and explore connections between the three urban sites. “These are all museums in the urban landscape that are jewels, but they don’t have the kind of attendance they want, though they have deep collections,” says Decker. “They don’t have the resources to undertake a project like this.”
A new site (urbanmuseumcollaborative.org) focuses on the museums’ artifacts, and how they cut across lines of inquiry. At Campbell House, for instance, guests can view documents of emancipation, signed by fur trader and entrepreneur Robert Campbell, for an enslaved woman and her two children. And when you talk about slavery in the context of the museums, you should know that Eugene Field’s father, Roswell Field, was an attorney who represented Dred Scott—who is, in turn, memorialized with a wax figure at The Griot Museum.
“These people’s lives were all intermingled,” explains Decker. “The people who propelled the city forward financially and culturally were dependent on the work of others: slaves and free blacks. Part of what we’re doing is trying to create a more inclusive history of St. Louis.”
