Antiques and The Arts Weekly with Debra Mecky

After 29 years as Green­wich His­tor­ical Soci­ety’s exec­ut­ive dir­ector and CEO, Debra Mecky, PhD, announced her retire­ment this past April. Mecky’s accom­plish­ments dur­ing her ten­ure are seem­ingly bound­less, so Antiques and The Arts Weekly took some time to dive into some of her per­sonal career high­lights, as well as what she’s look­ing for­ward to dur­ing this new, upcom­ing chapter in her life.

What was the Green­wich His­tor­ical Soci­ety like when you arrived, and what does it look like now, as you are pre­par­ing to leave?

Green­wich His­tor­ical Soci­ety had no dir­ector for two years prior to my arrival in April 1996, so there were a lot of things to address imme­di­ately. My first big project was to over­see the res­tor­a­tion of the Jus­tus Luke Bush Store­house (circa 1805, acquired in 1989) and adapt it as the site’s first vis­itor cen­ter and exhib­i­tion gal­lery. We com­mis­sioned an his­toric land­scape plan and cre­ated a new park­ing lot under the I-95 over­pass. Fol­low­ing the open­ing of the Store­house, I ini­ti­ated the project to rein­ter­pret Bush-Hol­ley House to bet­ter por­tray its role as home to Con­necti­cut’s first art colony, while con­tinu­ing to sup­port its use for school pro­grams serving every stu­dent in town.

As a note, Bush-Hol­ley House is a circa 1730 Geor­gian man­sion over­look­ing the Cos Cob har­bor where the David Bush fam­ily — des­cend­ants of Jus­tus Bosch of New Ams­ter­dam — car­ried out its mari­time busi­ness for a cen­tury. Around the time the rail­road came to Green­wich in 1847, the house passed out of the fam­ily and was acquired between 1882-84 by Josephine and Edward Hol­ley, whose des­cend­ants owned it until its acquis­i­tion by Green­wich His­tor­ical Soci­ety in 1957.

Could you share a few instances (exhib­i­tions or acquis­i­tions) that you con­sidered pivotal moments of your ten­ure?

As high­lights of my ten­ure, I am proud that we were able to acquire the former Toby’s Tav­ern (circa 1805, 1855) and add 72 art­works by Cos Cob art colony artists to the col­lec­tions, many of which are on dis­play in Bush-Hol­ley House, and oth­ers that are show­cased in the Per­man­ent Col­lec­tions and Spe­cial Exhib­i­tions Gal­ler­ies.

When Bush-Hol­ley House was first acquired by Green­wich His­tor­ical Soci­ety, there was very little aware­ness of its national sig­ni­fic­ance apart from it being an import­ant early local land­mark of Colo­nial and Revolu­tion­ary War his­tory. That changed due to the work of Amer­ican art his­tor­i­ans, includ­ing Green­wich res­id­ent Susan G. Lar­kin, whose book, The Cob Cob Art Colony: Impres­sion­ists on the Con­necti­cut Shore, was pub­lished by Yale Uni­versity Press in 2001.

Import­ant art­works added dur­ing my ten­ure included our first paint­ing by John Henry Twacth­man of his house on Round Hill Road in Green­wich and etch­ings, pas­tels and paint­ings of the Hol­ley House and Cos Cob by Childe Has­sam. We added the His­tor­ical Soci­ety’s first work of art by Theodore Robin­son, and our first work of art by a female mem­ber of the art colony, Maltide Browne. We pur­chased beau­ti­ful oil paint­ings and wooden sculp­tures by Elmer Mac­Rae, who mar­ried into the Hol­ley fam­ily, and whose mas­ter­pieces, “Schooner in the Ice” and “Octo­ber” are on dis­play in the house museum. We also acquired illus­tra­tions by Genjiro Yeto, a Japan­ese artist and friend of the Mac­Raes who fre­quen­ted the Hol­ley House.

In addi­tion to art­work, the archival col­lec­tions also expan­ded sig­ni­fic­antly dur­ing the past three dec­ades and are now rehoused in a state-of-the art research lib­rary and col­lec­tions vault built as part of the “Reima­gine the Cam­pus” trans­form­a­tion in 2016-2018. The Insti­tute of Museum and Lib­rary Ser­vices (IMLS) provided grants to move the col­lec­tions, cata­log and digit­ize them for greater access. Sig­ni­fic­ant acquis­i­tions included mater­ial related to WWI Col­onel Raynal C. Bolling, the Daniel Mer­ritt Mead Civil War journal, numer­ous col­lec­tions relat­ing to Mead, Reyn­olds, Brush and other old Green­wich fam­il­ies, the Thomas N. Cooke busi­ness records and a cen­tury of records kept by the League of Women Voters of Green­wich.

A mem­or­able acquis­i­tion was a slave mem­oir by Wal­lace Turnage that had been hid­den by his daugh­ter for many years, while she passed as white in Green­wich. The mem­oir gave her father’s hand­writ­ten account of his flight to free­dom, escap­ing from the Alabama plant­a­tion where he worked as field hand. Hav­ing invited David W. Blight of Yale Uni­versity’s Gilder Lehr­man Cen­ter for the Study of Slavery to speak at the His­tor­ical Soci­ety’s annual meet­ing, I took advant­age of the oppor­tun­ity to ask his advice regard­ing its authen­ti­city and tran­scrip­tion. His res­ult­ing book, A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Free­dom, Includ­ing Their Own Nar­rat­ives of Eman­cip­a­tion (2007), ensured that Wal­lace’s story, hid­den for so many years and almost lost, saw the light.

I under­stand that you over­saw the res­tor­a­tion of the Jus­tus Luke Bush Store­house and Toby’s Tav­ern. What is it like to over­see a his­tor­ical res­tor­a­tion, and what was your role in the pro­cess?

The first and most import­ant step in any res­tor­a­tion is find­ing the right pro­fes­sional team of his­tor­i­ans and archi­tects to com­plete an His­toric Struc­tures Report to doc­u­ment the exist­ing con­di­tions and to make recom­mend­a­tions to guide its res­tor­a­tion and use. Together with the Bush­Hol­ley House, the store­house and tav­ern are the only sur­viv­ing build­ings on the former Cos Cob Land­ing. They are wit­nesses to the multi-cul­tural his­tory of the vil­lage of Cos Cob and its early mari­time com­merce in the Eight­eenth and Nine­teenth Cen­tur­ies.

You imple­men­ted a bi-annual exhib­i­tion pro­gram dur­ing your ten­ure; do you have a favor­ite exhib­i­tion or two that stand out in your mind? Why were they so mean­ing­ful?

Spe­cial exhib­i­tions have provided won­der­ful oppor­tun­it­ies to show­case Green­wich’s his­tory. Some of my favor­ites include those that embraced under­rep­res­en­ted res­id­ents and immig­rant fam­il­ies. We did the first exhib­i­tion on “African Amer­ic­ans of Green­wich” and later pur­chased our first art­work by an African Amer­ican from Green­wich, Hester Mead, who had been enslaved by the Bush Fam­ily. We cel­eb­rated Italian his­tory and cul­ture through an exhib­i­tion, “Italy to Amer­ica.” Another high­light was work­ing with Susan G. Lar­kin and guest cur­at­ors on a series of art exhib­i­tions on indi­vidual artists of the Cos Cob art colony, includ­ing Childe Has­sam, Henry Fitch Taylor and illus­trat­ors like Genjiro Yeto.

Fund­ing museum-school part­ner­ships through the His­tor­ical Soci­ety’s endow­ment was a major part of your ten­ure. In your opin­ion, why is it so import­ant that we util­ize spaces like museums as tools for edu­ca­tion, and why did it become a point of interest for you?

Each year, thou­sands of stu­dents, primar­ily in grades 1-7, par­ti­cip­ate in the His­tor­ical Soci­ety’s inter­act­ive, inquiry-based pro­grams that help sharpen their crit­ical think­ing skills and develop a sense of civic engage­ment. Our recent assured exper­i­ence for fifth graders, Rebels and Roy­al­ists, teaches the com­plex life dur­ing the Amer­ican Revolu­tion affect­ing the Bush house­hold and Con­necti­cut. I’m very proud of our museum-school part­ner­ship with two of Green­wich’s Title I schools. Focused primar­ily on social stud­ies and fine art, the His­tor­ical Soci­ety’s rich pro­gram­ming is designed to com­ple­ment the Title I school’s mis­sion of nar­row­ing the achieve­ment gap that runs along racial, eth­nic and socioeco­nomic lines. And it is often the first museum exper­i­ence for these stu­dents and their fam­il­ies. You would be hard pressed to find any­one in Green­wich under the age of 30 who has not exper­i­enced the His­tor­ical Soci­ety’s classroom enrich­ment.

Is there any­thing that you didn’t get to do that you would have liked to?

The Board has ini­ti­ated a cap­ital cam­paign to double the endow­ment, which I have worked on but will not com­plete. Called “Past, Present Future: Our Town, Our Story,” it will ensure the future sus­tain­ab­il­ity of the Green­wich His­tor­ical Soci­ety to live into its vis­ion to col­lect and inter­pret a fuller his­tory of the town to a broader audi­ence. It will be an import­ant part of my suc­cessor’s role.

Now, the import­ant ques­tion! What does retire­ment look like for you?

For me, retire­ment is a time to step back and reas­sess my future. I am look­ing for­ward to recon­nect­ing with fam­ily and friends who are spread out over seven states from Mas­sachu­setts to Flor­ida to Wash­ing­ton State. I hope to hike and bike in many beau­ti­ful national parks and to tour his­toric places throughout the coun­try.