Join us on Tuesday, December 7, 7:00pm for our next Virtual Speaker Series with the Birthplace of Country Music Museum curatorial team. This talk will go along with The Way We Worked, our current special exhibit on display at the museum through January 23. René Rodgers, Erika Barker, and Scotty Almany will discuss how music is interwoven throughout the history of America’s workforce culture.

Workers’ anthems, union movement songs, stories of hard labor and tragedy, and how music influences workflow and productivity will be thoughtfully examined and presented by our staff. We look forward to sharing this exploration of music and work with our virtual audience!

The Way We Worked explores how work became such a central element in American culture by tracing the many changes that affected the workforce and work environments over the past 150 years. The diversity of the American workforce is one of its strengths, providing an opportunity to explore how people of all races and ethnicities identified commonalities and worked to knock down barriers in the professional world. The exhibition shows how we identify with work – as individuals and as communities. The Way We Worked, an exhibition created by the National Archives, is adapted for travel by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and made possible with the generous support of the United States Congress.

The Birthplace of Country Music Museum (an Affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution) has created a supplementary display related to work in Bristol and the surrounding region from major manufacturing and resource extraction to retail, food services, farming, local industry, and the local newspaper.

Scotty Almany is the Digital Media, Programming & Exhibit Logistics Manager at the Birthplace of Country Music Museum. He received his Master’s in Museum Studies from John Hopkins University, and he has worked at the museum since it opened in 2014. He is a musician, a Radio Bristol DJ, and a hockey fanatic. Erika Barker is the Curatorial Manager at the museum. She did a Master’s in Historical Administration from Eastern Illinois University, and she has been at the museum since 2017. Erika is learning Korean, loves to read, and plays Dungeons & Dragons. Dr. René Rodgers is the Head Curator at the museum. She did her Master’s and Ph.D. work at Durham University in the UK, and she joined the museum team before it opened as a member of the exhibit content development team. She loves to read, hike with her dog Pippa, and get creative with her bullet journal.
The event is free, but pre-registration is required.