Pete Daniel - Curating the American Past
Historian Pete Daniel will detail the challenges of serving as a public historian tasked with protecting a definitive American museum from attempts to erode scholarly standards. He will recount the exhilaration of innovative research, the joys of collaboration, and the rewards of mentoring new generations of historians.
A former curator at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History and an award-winning historian of the American South, Pete Daniel was the first full-time public historian to serve as president of the Organization of American Historians. He co-curated Rock ’n’ Soul: Social Crossroads and Official Images: New Deal Photography, among several other major exhibitions. His books include Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s and Dispossession: Discrimination against African American Farmers in the Age of Civil Rights.