[00:00:10] Speaker A: Hello, folks, and welcome back to another episode of The American Attic, where we deliver dialogue driven explorations of California history and beyond.
Presented by the Sacramento Historical Society and host it by Eric Sweigart. Join us as we uncover topics that inspire imagination, inform action, and enrich the present.
So who are those in our community that are helping to promote the past? How do we best capture and present the past? And what are some responsibilities that might come with it? In today's episode, we sit down with the executive director of the Sacramento History Museum to discuss a host of topics ranging from exciting exhibits waiting for you at the museum to the current trends and trials that come with a stewardship of local history. With decades of experience in the nonprofit space, our guest today walks us through highlights of her career as well as what visitors can expect on a visit to one of the finest collections of history in the Golden State. Whether you're a seasoned history buff or a debutante dipping your toe into the deep end of history, please enjoy this eye opening discussion with our guest, executive director Delta Mello.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: So again, Delta Mello, thank you for joining us with the American Attic, the Sacramento Historical Society's dedicated podcast. Thank you for taking the time today to talk a little bit about your background in history and the current activity and efforts that you're doing over there at the History Museum.
[00:01:54] Speaker C: And I was thinking a good place.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: We could start is just looking at your professional background and how does one with my background in history, I know there's a transition that needs to happen from studying it academically to applying it in a workplace.
[00:02:12] Speaker C: How did that go for you?
[00:02:14] Speaker D: So I have no history background except for a few things along the way. I am a museum person and I have been very fortunate in my career to have worked my entire museum career, which is now going on 30 plus years in the Sacramento region. So I started out at the Sacramento Zoo. I was their membership and then marketing and development director. I was there for 17 years and I stumbled upon that job quite by accident when I graduated. I graduated with a degree in communications and a minor in theater. And I really wanted to work I thought I wanted to work into television. I interned in television a little bit and realized that really wasn't what I wanted to do. I got a job with a software company. It was my first job out of college, but I immediately knew I wanted to work in nonprofit and I wanted to work for a theater company. My family I was raised with theater. My parents were involved in theater. As a kid, I was always drugged to rehearsals and not drugged, but went to rehearsals because I loved it. So I had a very vast theater background and I wanted to work in theater but at the time, there was not the kind of jobs that would pay my bills in theater. And so I decided that I would volunteer for any place that I could in the arts. And so I volunteered for theaters. I volunteered for the California Arts Council for museums, and I just volunteered and kind of getting my feet wet and seeing what's going on in the Sacramento region in that scene. And I was new to Sacramento. I came to Sac State originally. I was from the East Bay area, and so when I graduated from high school, my parents moved up into the foothills, and I started going to school at Sac State. So anyway, was new to the area, wanted to learn all about it.
One of the people I volunteered for took a job at the Sacramento Zoo. She was the first nonprofit employee. Now, the Sacramento Zoo is a city owned, but it was managed by or it had, at that time, a small, nonprofit, supportive arm that did fundraising. And she told me about a position, and she said something very wise. She says, I know you're interested in theater, but I think what you will find is that in working in this environment, you will find the same qualities of a nonprofit, civic minded, artistic minded. You will find those same qualities working at the zoo. And I thought she was kind of crazy, but it was intriguing. I'm working at Zoo, so I got that job, and I worked there for I was there for 17 years, and I probably would have stayed there, but I thought, what more would I like to do? And I applied for a job with the California State Railroad Museum Foundation, and that was the nonprofit, profit supporting arm for a state park. So now I'm dealing with a state park, the railroad museum. And it was a little bit different than dealing with the city. We weren't managing it. We weren't involved in the management of it. We were just a supporting arm. But we also had the productions of the Polar Express that was brand new. When I had started, they had already done it one year, and I got involved in it. And the Polar Express is a mix of railroad and storytelling and theater.
I loved it. It was extremely impactful on my life. I didn't have a Christmas for eight.
[00:06:21] Speaker B: Years, because that Christmas, holy cow.
[00:06:23] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:24] Speaker D: But it was a theatrical production, and that's how I looked at it was, great, let's make this theatrical. And I worked with people that were very excited about that, and so I thoroughly enjoyed that. But I also wanted to be more involved with the museum aspect. And I really thought to myself, I'd like to run my own museum. But I knew I didn't want it to be a state park, and I didn't want it to be a city museum. I wanted it to be completely independent of that. So I was selected as the executive director for the California Automobile Museum. And that was a true learning experience for a lot of reasons.
It was completely dependent on its programs, its admissions, its donations. There was no city or county or state or federal support other than perhaps a grant here and there. But it was really reliant on the volunteer base, as was the Polar Express, as was everywhere I worked. The volunteer base is so crucial to the museum world. So by now, I'm at my third museum, and I realize I'm a museum person. I'm a museum administrator. I'm not a historian. And I used to argue about the automobile museum with one of the docents who said this was a history museum. I said, it's really more than that. It's a cultural museum because car culture is such an entity unto itself. We're not just telling the history of the making of an automobile. We're talking about lifestyle and different genres and how it affected transportation over the years and how we all it's so American. It's such an American story. So I loved being there, but I found it was challenging. It was a boot camp for being an executive director. It really was. And the position opened up at the Sacramento History Museum back in old Sacramento, and they were looking for their first for the nonprofit arm, their first executive director. They had not had an executive director. The executive director was a city employee prior to that, but they were taking on more of the operation of the museum, so I applied for that. I love old Sacramento. I love the idea of coming back. I had worked with those people when I was at the Railroad Museum Foundation, so I was very familiar with the museum. And so I came and I became the executive director of the history museum.
My first two years, we closed for, let's see, I think almost nine months for a construction project. My first year, we opened up for another nine months, and then we closed for almost a year and a half for COVID. So I spent my first time there first. Within three years, I spent more time closing the museum than I opening. But it was at that time that we started doing some other things we could talk about a little bit more. But that's been my trajectory. So when people say, oh, you know all about this history, I'm not a historian. I have absorbed so much information. I have absorbed about endangered species. I know railroad history, I know Sacramento history, I know car culture. I've absorbed a lot of that. But I am in the business of making a museum the best place that it can be, and that is a place that is relevant to the people that we want to come to it.
[00:10:09] Speaker B: Yeah, well, and in my mind, too, it's like that role that you just described and the trajectory that you followed that's kind of where the rubber meets the road, so to speak, in terms of promoting history. Even when I was a history teacher.
[00:10:23] Speaker C: At a high school, I felt maybe.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: It'S just my personality, I don't know. But I felt like I wanted to evangelize this subject as well. And just even if you don't study it as an academic course, there's an abundance there of stories, of information, of.
[00:10:38] Speaker C: Stuff that people part of the reason.
[00:10:41] Speaker B: I wanted to ask you that question was everybody finds their way to history differently, it seems.
[00:10:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:46] Speaker D: And everybody loves history. I had a conversation with a woman here in Old Was. She had just started working at one of the local restaurants. She had only been there a few months and just new to Sacramento. And I said, well, you should come down to the History museum, learn a little bit about the city. And she said, oh, I don't like history. I said, well, that's not true. You do like history. Everybody likes history. You just haven't been engaging with it in a way that has been interesting to you. And hopefully that's something that we can offer.
[00:11:21] Speaker C: But.
[00:11:25] Speaker D: I think everybody, if you look at what we're doing with finding your roots and just all of these connections of ancestry that has grown over the years, everybody loves history. Everybody wants to know. As soon as something happens, they call up and say, what happened back in the day when that was when happened. How would this compare with the Spanish flu, when the flood, when the river was rising? How does that compare?
They're always looking for some kind of historical reference. People I believe love history. It's just how they engage with it. And unfortunately and I'm sure you were a wonderful teacher unfortunately, in our schools, I don't think we learn two things. We don't learn enough about our local history, our town, our block, our neighborhood. We don't learn enough about that in school, and we just aren't introduced to history in a way that is as captivating. I remember in high school thinking, I love history, but I'm not getting anything from this.
I did take a lot of history courses in college, but it's something that I think everybody is involved in. Nobody doesn't like history, in my opinion.
[00:12:59] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:00] Speaker B: And history is so big, right? So there's a lot of sub domains, sub areas. And I wanted to ask, as a follow up, do you feel yourself pulled, either professionally or personally, to any specific aspect? Is it american? It could be a time period. It could be another aspect of it. Do you feel pulled to anything in particular like that? Like, I was a military history when I was a kid. I was pulled to that aspect of it.
[00:13:30] Speaker C: Do you have anything like that?
[00:13:31] Speaker D: Yeah, personally, I was always fascinated with the pre World War II and post World War II, that whole genre of time. But that's personally, professionally? That's an interesting question because that is sort of the dilemma or the existential question that we're asking about this museum. This museum was built in 1985. The Sacramento History Museum built in 1985. It's a part of the historic district in old Sacramento waterfront. And it was meant to be a showcase for the collections that the city county had, their archives and collections. And at the time that it opened, I remember coming real early on. It reflected the many communities that we had as well over the years. It's gone through all kinds of transition. It was merged with the Science Center and then it was separated from the Science Center and then it was looked at that it should only reflect the Gold Rush era. And this is something that I've been struggling with because the Gold Rush era is important, but it's really the Gold Rush and then what? It's the Gold Rush and who was impacted by it, how it shaped this city, how it shaped the region, the people, the diversity, how it's made us who we are today. You can almost always take back to that Gold Rush, both the good and the bad. And so yes, the Gold Rush is very important, but we also want to talk about things that are relevant to the people who are here today. An example of that would be our newest exhibit, which is Boulevard Dream Sacramento. It's the story of the culture of low riding in the Sacramento region. And we're not a car museum, so we don't have cars, but we have the clubs. There's over 40 clubs. We have the memorabilia.
The struggles that they had in being pushed into different areas of Sacramento, the ban on cruising, that was just a discriminatory piece of legislation to keep a group of people from doing a certain thing they didn't like the thought that it's gang related, all of these things, when in reality, it's very much a family oriented. But to bring that into this museum is not only surprising for the visitor, it's surprising for that low rider culture to feel that, wow, we have our story in a museum structure. And it suddenly occurred to me, who wouldn't want their story in a museum environment for people to see? And we look at history as being the history that happens ten minutes ago as well as.
[00:16:46] Speaker C: 100 years. Yeah, no, that's great.
[00:16:49] Speaker B: I'm excited. I haven't seen it yet, but it's on my list to come visit you guys over there at the museum and check out that exhibit because it is.
[00:16:57] Speaker C: As you said, it can be a give and take.
[00:16:59] Speaker B: I think history in its best is a give and take between the community that's being showcased and the people doing the showcasing of the community. So yeah, no, excited to check that out. And we'll also add information in the show notes of this episode. We'll have all sorts of links and information and things like that to everything you guys have going on over there. I think as executive director, obviously you're involved in a big chunk, if not everything, that goes on at the museum.
[00:17:30] Speaker C: Are there aspects of your kind of day to day, week to week work.
[00:17:35] Speaker B: That you feel that you enjoy more? I know you guys have a staff over there, so maybe it's the collection of people that you're working with. Is there anything you're pulled to from your kind of week to week work.
[00:17:46] Speaker C: That you enjoy more?
[00:17:47] Speaker D: I thoroughly enjoy the people I work with.
[00:17:51] Speaker C: They are young, educated and really hungry.
[00:18:01] Speaker D: To do something that's important and relevant and that people will be excited about.
I love our team and I have to go back to pre COVID. When we were forced to close many places, not just museums, but businesses and such, had layoffs. And our board of directors saw my recommendation, but they saw the value in we have to keep these people and we don't know how long it's going to be, but we have some reserves. We'll start with that. We'll apply for PPP loans. We will keep our people on hand. So throughout that time frame, we kept everybody and didn't lose anybody.
That was one of our permanent employees. We had tour guides that were seasonal. They worked once or twice a month, maybe sometimes. So we didn't have our seasonal employees, but we kept our core team. And I think the most exciting time was during that COVID in a lot of ways because I asked them, okay, we're here, we're at home, but we're going to do something. What can we do? And I said that the most important thing to me is I don't want us to be forgotten in this. God knows how long this is going to take. And so one of the staff members started talking about, well, we realized we needed to work on social media. That's where we could go. So we had some videos in the can that had been never really viewed but were really very well produced that were telling about old Sacramento. And it was ironic because when people were in Sacramento, we had QR codes around, they could learn more about the building and such. Nobody was interested. But suddenly when they were not able to go to Old Sacramento, people were interested. So we gathered this following and then one of the staff members, Jared Jones, he know I've been playing around on TikTok and I'd like to try something. And when our volunteer who ran our printing shop came, was able to come back and we were doing virtual school programs, so he was able to come into the museum, jared started doing videos with him. And we have just blown all of us away with where we're at now. And I know you know some of those numbers, but we have 2.6 million TikTok followers and we then parlayed that into YouTube. We have over 2 million subscribers on YouTube. We're reaching people all over the world. There are people that are sending us things, sending us money.
We are just constantly amazed at the reach that we have created. Now, that in of itself is exciting and wonderful, but what I'm excited about is that we took it on ourselves. I gave the staff the room to try something and to experiment, and this is the result of it. And it's so wonderful to try something completely brand new and have such a great success. But it's also in credit to this wonderful group of people. I just love working with them.
[00:21:29] Speaker C: Yeah, that's an amazing I remember some.
[00:21:33] Speaker B: Of those numbers, and I would have to think know, a social media presence like that would be that would rival other museums in California, that might surpass other museums in California, if not the nation with a following like that. I'm not familiar with the numbers of other museums, of course, but.
[00:21:53] Speaker D: We are the most followed museum in the amazing.
[00:21:57] Speaker C: Amazing that's talk about a feather in the cat.
[00:22:00] Speaker D: Yeah. That's simply by virtue of the fact that so many museums did not venture into TikTok, it was seemed to be as our volunteer, when he said when he went and looked at TikTok and said, I'm not dancing, and we no, no, we're not going to do that. There was a museum, a history museum in England that we were the Black Country Museum that we were following that were doing some things on TikTok, and that was one of the impetus of trying something like that. But a lot of museums weren't trying it. So Jared has been he has spoken to conferences. He's been spoken to a TikTok conference they called, flew him in, plus museum conferences to talk about how nonprofits can use TikTok in a way that is.
[00:22:52] Speaker C: Not only well, the financial part of.
[00:22:56] Speaker D: It is tricky, but it is a way of reaching an audience that we don't typically reach.
[00:23:04] Speaker C: Yeah, well and if there's a lasting.
[00:23:06] Speaker B: Lesson that I remember from my history studies, it's the organizations that leverage technology successfully.
[00:23:13] Speaker C: Those are the ones that have done the best.
[00:23:16] Speaker B: When you look at the past and you look at times change, and that's always the challenge organizations face.
[00:23:23] Speaker C: But it sounds like you guys well, that's right.
[00:23:27] Speaker D: What was the key word during COVID Pivot.
That ability to pivot has been something that I valued as a soft skill of being flexible, being open to new ideas and innovative and being willing to fail.
[00:23:46] Speaker C: That's the other thing.
[00:23:47] Speaker D: We had nothing to lose. I mean, what more could we lose than the fact that we can't open our doors?
Why not try it? Why not?
[00:23:58] Speaker C: Sure. Yeah.
[00:24:00] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:24:01] Speaker C: And we could easily have already talked.
[00:24:05] Speaker B: About this, but something I was curious about so you have a career at the Automobile Museum, at the Railroad Museum.
Now being at the Sacramento History Museum. Is there anything from that track record, a particular milestone? And this could very well be it, what you just mentioned about the expansion into social media, but is there any other major milestones where you felt really connected to your work or it's something that you're really proud of, either at the Sacramento History Museum or some of.
[00:24:35] Speaker C: The other positions that you've held?
[00:24:38] Speaker D: I think at each place, I had things that I was wonderfully proud of at the zoo.
I was also, as a child and teenager, a ballet dancer, and I loved ballet, and I wanted to bring that into the zoo. And so we created something a partnership with the ballet. We called it dance in the wild. And we brought out a stage, and we performed outdoors and brought people in to kind of connect them with ballet. And the dancers loved it. We loved it. It was one of my more proudest moment. And one thing about it that was really stuck with me, will stick with me forever, is the Friday after 911, we were scheduled to have Dance in the Wild, and we spent the well, first of all, half of our staff, our management staff, actually, all of our management staff was at a conference. They were not able to fly back. They were in Florida. So there were a few of us that were mid level management that had to make some decisions, and one of them was, are we going to open the zoo again and have Dance in the Wild? And it still chokes me up. We decided to go forward with it, and when we did, we had just a flood of people come to it. And over and over, people would say, this was the first time they left the house.
This is the first time they stopped watching TV, because at that time, we were all just glued to our TVs. And they just appreciated just being able to get out and look at something beautiful outside in the air and stuff. So that was something that I was very proud of at the zoo, at the Automobile Museum. One of the things that happened on my watch, it certainly was started by the previous director, but was getting the new roof on the building. When I started there, we put out 75 buckets to catch water when it rained.
[00:26:51] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness.
[00:26:52] Speaker D: Oh, my gosh. It was just awful. We'd move cars around. We'd cover things up when it would rain bad, and it got worse every year. So we raised the money to fix the roof, and then we also negotiated at that time to have the city give us that building. And that was a big deal, and I was very proud of that. And, of course, running the Polar Express was everybody loved the Polar Express. And so it was this great theatrical production and working with the the hundreds of volunteers that helped put it on and just giving this joy to people and their kids and families and stuff, that was a big deal.
[00:27:39] Speaker B: Those are good ones. Those are all really good ones. I have a soft spot for the Polar Express.
[00:27:43] Speaker C: I grew up with that.
[00:27:45] Speaker B: Every Christmas the book would come out and it came with a little bell and you didn't want to lose the bell.
[00:27:52] Speaker C: Oh, man. Wow.
[00:27:53] Speaker B: Well, thank you for that. And although I believe I was in maybe third grade at the September 11 attacks, I would imagine that most communities would appreciate a sense of normalcy and seeing something beautiful. Like you said, when they turn on their televisions and they see so much devastation.
[00:28:14] Speaker D: Yeah, it was a strange time as an adult, we were literally glued to our TVs.
There was such a somber in this about that. And I think it was on a Tuesday. I believe it was on a Tuesday. And so by Friday, it was still very obviously very fresh and was going to be for months and years even. But yeah, people said that over and over. And it just really struck me that, wow, I'm so glad we decided to move forward with this because we thought at first, we thought, well, if we do it, will anybody come?
Because of the way people were reacting. And so, yeah, that was a cool wow.
[00:29:04] Speaker B: Well, taking kind of speaking of pivoting, moving from looking at the past and your career and taking a look at what's happening at the History Museum nowadays, you already mentioned one. You mentioned Boulevard Dreams, which is very exciting and really excited to check that out. Anything else? As we move into kind of the holidays and the end of 2023, anything else the History Museum has going on? I feel like you seem to always have a packed calendar. It seems so.
[00:29:34] Speaker C: Anything else?
[00:29:35] Speaker D: Well, the living history is going to do some Victorian Christmas. Victorian American Christmas. Not Victorian as in England, just some festivities.
So in addition to the museum, we have our tour programs and we have a volunteer group called Sacramento Living History. And back in the day, they were responsible for Gold Rush days and other things like that. And we've been struggling with the whole Living History concept, and that's a nationwide I'm going to pivot a little bit to my response as a everybody when we closed for COVID, that's not the only thing that was happening. And the murder of George Floyd was a watershed moment.
[00:30:41] Speaker C: And in the museum world, we had.
[00:30:46] Speaker D: Been talking for years about diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, belonging, all of those things, but very few were taking any action. And with that, as in the 1960s, where everything kind of came to a head with not only was it there was protests about war, there was women's rights and civil rights and gay rights and Native American rights, I mean, that was kind of a cosmic moment of reckoning. And I really felt like it felt like to me, as to many others, that this was a moment of reckoning. What are you doing about this? And people were being called on the carpet, and museums were being looked at for, what are you displaying in your collections? Where did you get them? Who owned them prior to you? Why do you have them?
And what collections or what stories aren't you telling? Who have you not included? And unfortunately, many history museums have a very predominantly white, upper class leaning.
[00:32:12] Speaker C: Of.
[00:32:13] Speaker D: History stories, not because that is what has been collected.
Museums were asked, art museums, why don't you have more African American artists? Why aren't you collecting these things? History museums were asked, what stories are you not telling?
So as a museum, as we were doing our thing with social media and stuff, we also started to look at what kind of museum should we be in Sacramento? If we're the Sacramento History Museum, are we that, or are we a gold rush museum? And if we are the Sacramento Histories Museum, why aren't we telling stories of what has been called the most diverse city in the country at several different times in the past 20 years? Why are we not telling all these other stories as well? And that's a big bite to take, but that is the shift that we are going on, and that is to allow the community to be the curator and welcome them into the museum to tell their stories about themselves rather than relying on us to tell their stories. A prime example is the Native American community. Now, we always had a Native California exhibit, and usually those exhibit consists of baskets that are made hundreds of years ago, and they show those weaving, and they're very somber.
[00:34:05] Speaker C: But there are still kids that come.
[00:34:08] Speaker D: Out of school that don't realize Indians still exist.
We realized we needed to redo this whole story, and we partnered with the Shingle Spring Band of Mewk Indians to curate the exhibit and tell the story that they want to tell rather than us dictating to them. So the Sacramento area is the ancestral homeland of the Nissanon. The Nissanon have a very interesting story of being a part of also Mewk and Patwin and as part of the movement in California. And California has a history with the Native American community that is actually horrifying, and it's not something that we really learn about in schools. We learn about, I think, the Plains Indians and the movement and the pushing and, yes, some massacres, but here in California, when we had so many people coming to California at such a short period of time, they decimated the Native communities, literally. There was genocide, displacement, everything. And above that, we don't hear about.
So what did they want to tell? Do they want to tell that story? They wanted to focus on the fact that we are reclaiming our culture.
[00:35:41] Speaker C: We are alive.
[00:35:43] Speaker D: Thriving. And we are here. And this land that you are a part of is our land.
But we want to show what we're doing today. So everything in the exhibit is brand new. It was made in the last couple of years using the skills, the materials and the traditions of their ancestors to show regalia, tools, games, baskets. Yes, but they were all made currently, and they wanted to really express that we are here, we are alive, and this is our land, by giving them that opportunity that made for such a more rich story about the native community. And that's just one tribe, California.
Unfortunately, I don't know how many tribes the single state had more tribes, I think, than most of the country altogether. And so that's just one tribe telling their story. But by allowing not allowing and excuse me, that's the wrong word. By welcoming them into the museum to tell their story, that's the difference that we at the Sacramento History Museum are going about. That next step was the lowrider. We welcomed them in to tell their story of their history, their culture, and not try to dictate, but rather give them the space in a museum setting. So for right now, coming towards the end of the year, what do we have going on?
Not a whole lot of new we have Ghost Tours. They sell out right away, so they're really fun. We do paranormal. We do some things that are not maybe directly history related.
[00:37:48] Speaker B: History adjacent?
[00:37:49] Speaker D: Yeah, they're history adjacent. Thank you.
But they're engaging. And in my opinion, if you can open a door for again, everybody loves history. They just have to find the right entrance to it. And so if you can use paranormal to open the door and tell them a few stories about the inhabitants here beforehand or with Ghost Tours or with some of the other things that we do.
So we do that history adjacent programming, and we're gearing up for the school season. Our school season has just exploded with schoolchildren coming to the museum. And then we have some touring exhibits coming. The next one will be in February, and that's called Tattooed and Tenacious. And it's tattooed Victorian women, including native women, and why? And it was kind of a popular way to be radical and to break the chains of the Victorian lifestyle for women that were this was a way to secretly rebel. And what we want to do, though, is we want to reach out to our current very large Inking community and get stories of women artists and women who use tattooing to tell a story, whether it's life or something that is significant to them. So that's one thing that's coming up. That'll be in 2024.
[00:39:29] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:39:30] Speaker B: And whenever I go down there to Old Sacramento, I always see things put up around old Sacramento promoting the amazing things you guys are doing there. So very excited for any listeners that haven't done some of these tours definitely encourage you to do so. And I do want to be respectful.
[00:39:47] Speaker C: About time.
[00:39:47] Speaker B: I know we're approaching the hour mark.
[00:39:49] Speaker C: But I had to ask, going a.
[00:39:51] Speaker B: Little bit off script. I have been I'd say in the last maybe ten months. I've been hearing through a few different media sources about this, and I think it's at the international level, this process.
[00:40:02] Speaker C: Of and I believe the term is.
[00:40:05] Speaker B: Repatriation of artifacts specifically from colonial nations that have a history of colonialism that have acquired all of these artifacts, move them to museums in the colonial country or in the mother country or whatever.
[00:40:21] Speaker C: The correct term is.
[00:40:23] Speaker B: But now the nations who those artifacts belong to are receiving them back in some instances. And the conversation is going and I think it's maybe only been the last.
I mean, it's been happening probably before that.
[00:40:38] Speaker D: It's bubbled up greatly since it's been part of the reckoning.
Certainly it's bubbled up even more.
And I don't have a real strong background in this, but initially art that was confiscated by the Nazis, that were returned to Jewish families and such was one start of it. And then having human remains and especially having Native American artifacts and those kinds of things are being discussed to a great degree. What you're talking about repatriation to colonized countries, that is too all part of the mix. Now, we at the Sacramento History Museum are not a collecting museum. So we don't get involved in that to a great degree because we are not collecting anything.
The City and County Collection Center. The center for Sacramento History is the holder of those kinds of things. But as I said in the very beginning, part of the reckoning is people museums looking at their collections and having to look at how those were acquired. An example locally would be during the 1960s when the West End was demolished for redevelopment, the Capitol Mall was developed. Old Sacramento was kind of saved, but also revived into a historic district. But the whole West End had your minority communities. Black, Hispanic, Asian, Chinese, Japanese. You know, you had this great international group of people that lived in Sacramento that were displaced. So when those buildings were displaced or tore down or sometimes signs and things like that were acquired during that time without the knowledge of perhaps of the owners, that's kind of an example. Do we look at this and say give it back, or do we talk to them about it? What can we do? What if we preserve it for you? When I say we the collections part of it. So that is a really big issue. And especially with the Native American community, we don't get too involved because we don't collect.
[00:43:34] Speaker C: And.
[00:43:37] Speaker D: That'S in a whole nother area of change in the museum world.
[00:43:42] Speaker B: Yeah, and that's the only reason I wanted to bring it up, is I had a feeling it was on your radar. But I think most of the examples.
[00:43:50] Speaker C: I heard of, I believe, were museums.
[00:43:53] Speaker B: In England that were moving items back to other countries.
But that's part of the reason why I find these insights so interesting is that for the subject being history, there sure is a lot of stuff in the present that is being considered and discussed and debated, all of those things.
[00:44:16] Speaker D: It's a part of us every time we look and we compare and we try to compare and contrast, is it the same as it was?
I love the author Doris, I always get it confused. Doris Kearns.
Goodwin Kearns when she would be brought in on shows, and they talk always election time, and they talk about what's happening and all the brutality and how the ugliness, and she would take and she would say, well, back during this particular election campaign, this and this happened, she would always bring that perspective that you didn't really think you need to know. But once you knew it, it was like, okay, well, this is kind of all right. This isn't maybe as new as we thought it was or as different as we thought it was. And I always loved bringing that perspective into what's something that's happening right today that we think is only current events, but if we take a historical perspective of it, we can look at it.
[00:45:27] Speaker C: A little bit differently.
[00:45:28] Speaker B: Yes. And I think that is a great note to end on. So thank you for that last question. For folks, for listeners that want to learn more about the History Museum, what platforms and channels are you guys on? I know you mentioned TikTok already. How can people encounter more of the content you guys are putting out or.
[00:45:50] Speaker C: Just learn more about the museum?
[00:45:52] Speaker D: Well, our website is sackhistorymuseum.org. We are at Sackhistory Museum on TikTok Facebook, and our YouTube channel is really filled with all kinds of a lot of the things that we see on TikTok and such, we take over to YouTube as well. So there's a lot of content there. We spent some time going out into neighborhoods and talking about how they became named, the name they are. We do a lot of this day in history and some fun things too. And so a lot can be found on YouTube. And that's kind of become the more general place for people to say, I don't do Facebook, I don't do TikTok. But most know trip over YouTube, they.
[00:46:44] Speaker B: Do maybe spend too much time on it like I do.
[00:46:49] Speaker C: Oh, man.
[00:46:50] Speaker B: Well, Delta, thank you so much. Executive director at the Sacramento History Museum. Thank you so much for your time this afternoon.
[00:46:57] Speaker D: Oh, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity.
[00:47:02] Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Sacramento Historical Society's, the American Attic. If you'd like to learn more about the society and upcoming speaker series, please visit sackhistoricalsociety.org. If you have ideas for topics and.
[00:47:16] Speaker B: Speakers we can engage.
[00:47:17] Speaker A: Drop us a line at
[email protected]. See you next time.
