Exhibit: Honoring Our Past, Celebrating the Future

In this exhibit, students immersed themselves into Sandy Spring history by creating beautiful works of art inspired by local history. In early November, middle school students from the Barnesville School of Arts and Sciences spent a ?Collaborative Day? visiting Sandy Spring Museum to prepare. The fifth through eighth graders were taught how to handle objects from the Museum?s collection. Nearly twenty items ranging from newspaper publications and handwritten correspondence, to clothing, daguerreotypes (an early form of photographs), and athletic gear were chosen for this exercise.

The objects were selected to represent four notable people from Sandy Spring?s past: suffragist Mary Bentley Thomas, baseball player Jack Bentley, postmaster and bank founder Alban Gilpin Thomas, and free black, shingle maker Remus Q. Hill. The significance of each item in the life of its prior owner was studied and students selected the objects that interested them most to sketch, and create an original work of art based on the object?s story.