October 20, 2009
Contact: Lynn Wolf Gentzler (573) 882-7083
The State Historical Society of Missouri
Members of The State Historical Society of Missouri will hold their annual meeting October 31, 2009, at the Tiger Hotel in downtown Columbia. This day-long event will feature professional development workshops, a silent auction of valuable art, sports, and history items, research and publication awards, lunch in the hotel’s Grand Ballroom, and a one-woman play about the life of Jane Clemens, mother of Missouri’s most noted author, Mark Twain.
Morning workshops will teach participants about preserving paper and three-dimensional objects in museums and historical societies throughout the state with three sessions: “Paper Preservation 101” with Claudia Powell, document conservation specialist at the University of Missouri-Columbia Western Historical Manuscript Collection; “Collections Preservation” led by Linda Eikmeier Endersby, assistant director of the Missouri State Museum and Jefferson Landing State Historic Site; and “In Storage and On Display” featuring Greig Thompson, the Society’s chief museum preparator.
Executive Director Gary R. Kremer and Society President Doug Crews will give the annual report at 11:30 a.m., highlighting accomplishments from the past year, defining future opportunities, and making awards to accomplished scholars in Missouri history. The $500 Mary C. Neth Prize for the best article on women or gender issues in the past two volumes of the Missouri Historical Review will be given to Dr. Kimberly A. Schreck, Washington University, for “The Patriarch, His ‘Wives,’ His ‘Slaves,’ and His ‘Children’: Contested Wills in the Case of Keen v. Keen.” The Lewis E. Atherton Thesis and Dissertation Awards will be made to recognize outstanding scholarship in Missouri history and to honor Atherton, a former trustee and president of the Society and longtime professor in the University of Missouri Department of History. The $500 Atherton Thesis Prize will go to Peter K. Johnson of Blue Springs for “The Origins and Nature of Indian Slavery in Colonial St. Louis,” and the $1,000 Atherton Dissertation Prize will be awarded to Dr. Adam Arenson, Assistant Professor of History, University of Texas-El Paso, for “City of Manifest Destiny: St. Louis and the Cultural Civil War, 1848-1877.” Carolyn Gilman of the Missouri History Museum in St. Louis will receive the Society’s $750 annual Missouri Historical Review best article award for “L’Anneé du Coup: The Battle of St. Louis, 1780.” And finally, Professor Jay H. Buckley of Brigham Young University will be awarded both the 2009 State Historical Society of Missouri Book Award ($1,000) and the Eagleton-Waters Book Award ($1,500) for his book William Clark: Indian Diplomat. The late Senator Thomas F. Eagleton and Society trustee Henry J. Waters III established the Eagleton-Waters biennial award for recognition of the best work in Missouri political history.
The annual Distinguished Service Award will be given to W. Raymond Wood, Professor Emeritus in the University of Missouri Department of Anthropology. Wood is a longtime supporter and researcher at the Society and the Western Historical Manuscript Collection. Professor Wood is a speaker for the Society’s Missouri History Speakers’ Bureau, has served as a consultant for Society exhibitions and presentations, offered public programs for Society audiences, and has published in the Missouri Historical Review.
A luncheon will be held at 12:30 p.m., followed by MoHiP Theatre’s (Missouri History in Performance) production of Miz Jane, a one-woman play about the life of Jane Lampton Clemens, mother of writer and humorist Mark Twain. Talented mid-Missouri artists Jane Accurso and Dierik Leonhard will support the play with period music.
New to this year’s annual meeting will be a silent auction to include a watercolor landscape painting by Frank Stack, a Mizzou Tiger basketball autographed by head coach Mike Anderson, an original Thomas Hart Benton print, a reproduction of an 1836 map of Missouri, an assortment of wine, and Panera’s “Bread for a Year.”
The general public is welcome and encouraged to attend The State Historical Society of Missouri’s Annual Meeting. The fee for the meeting, luncheon, and entertainment is $30 for members and $35 for nonmembers. The fee to participate in the workshops – in whole or part – is $15 for members and $20 for nonmembers. Reservations will be taken through October 28, 2009, online at http://shs.umsystem.edu/annualmeeting or by calling (573) 882-7083. Free parking is available in the Cherry Street Garage across from the Tiger Hotel, and the hotel is handicap accessible.