The Brooklyn Paper’s going Dutch this week? The newspaper’s title banner has been changed to the Dutch spelling of the word (or at least a version of the Dutch spelling) and is replete with an animated windmill. Jasper Danckaerts would be thrilled – though perhaps not as much with reporter Shannon Gies’ “good riddance” send off of Danckaerts and the Labadists.

As for the Breukelen/Breuckelen spelling of the Dutch-settled land – this is something that BHS debated about during the preparation of the Pages of the Past exhibit. After all, BHS has a t-shirt that uses the spelling with the ‘c’, and yet Danckaerts’ very diary from 1679, around which the exhibit is centered, drops the ‘c’ consistently in his descriptions of the new land. After consulting with the scholars who were assisting us with the exhibit we learned that both spellings were used in the middle-Dutch writing of the day. We decided to be consistent with Danckaert’s usage of the word and retain his spelling. So keep that tidbit in mind when you’re around town at other events celebrating 400 years of Dutch influence in New York.

If you’ve been clicking around the BHS website recently, you’ve probably seen the mentions of this new exhibit, Pages of the Past: The Breukelen Adventures of Jasper Danckaerts. Or if you’ve come into our building lately then you might have noticed that exhibit in the midst of installation. Days ago I was stunned to see the high school student-curators who’ve created this exhibit, painting images of whales and birds onto the walls. The images were straight out of Jasper Danckaerts’ diary, perfectly resembling the sepia drawings throughout his journals. I wonder if in 1679, Danckaerts had any idea that the contents of his diary would be enlarged and recreated on the walls of a venerable institution not far from where he originally stayed in “Breukelen.”

"Pages of the Past" opens June 5 and will be up through January 2010

This exhibit promises to be amazing and I am looking forward to talking to the nineteen student-curators when the exhibit opens on Friday night. I invite everyone to join us for the celebration, which runs from 5:30 -7:30 PM. Reveling in the history of New York’s finest borough is just how you should kick off your weekend. We’ll also be offering behind-the-scenes tours of our AMAZING, interior landmark Othmer Library. The Collections staff will offer tours and a peek at some of the prized items in the BHS Collections (ask Liz about the wax head!). If you’ve never been to the BHS Library, well I couldn’t improve upon the description offered by Francis Morrone in his column in the New York Sun. Suffice to say the Library alone is well worth a trip to BHS. 

In the meantime – got a question for our ace team of high school student-curators? Post them here in the comments section and we’ll have the students reply. See you Friday!

As someone charged with marketing BHS and our many awesome projects, programs and collections I often find myself weighing the most innovative and cost-effective options to spread the word about our work. Last night it came to me in a dream, (perhaps because of Julie’s  obsession with them) that creating a BHS iPhone app would certainly be the best way to introduce people to the Brooklyn Historical Society.

But then again, what would a BHS app do? Would people be able to look up their family genealogy with the touch of a screen? Or trace their house history by simply typing in the address? Would the app give people a virtual tour of our landmark building from the Minton Tiles to the iron trusses?  Perhaps the app would offer users a selection of oral histories or a behind the scenes tour of a new exhibit or give teachers an electronic curriculum kit on a variety of Brooklyn-centric topics. Come to think of it, maybe we’d need a few BHS apps.

Well, there are lots of reasons these things would not be realistic applications. It certainly would be a shame if people visited BHS only by way of their phones, they would not experience the full beauty and history of the building and would lose out on the experience of mining our collections for their research. Luckily, I know nothing about creating apps and of course, it was just a dream – but if you have any thoughts on a BHS app that would actually prove useful and engaging send ‘em our way!