Longfellow House Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site

Charles Appleton Longfellow (1844–1893), the eldest son of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Frances Appleton Longfellow, was a globetrotter and avid collector. During his 20-month stay in Japan (1871–1873), he purchased and shipped home to Cambridge dozens of crates of artworks and decorative objects for himself, friends, and family.

Upon his return in 1874, Charley transformed the sitting room at his family home into a “Japan Room” with the help of his cousin Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow (1854–1934). One of its most striking features was a ceiling decorated with more than 35 fan-shaped paintings arranged in a “scattered fan” pattern.

Although Japanese art and decorative objects had entered U.S. markets by the mid-1870s, their availability and visibility varied considerably by city. Created in 1874, on the eve of the transformative 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, the Japan Room represents an unusually early American domestic interior devoted to Japanese art and design. This lecture examines its remarkable ceiling of fan paintings, exploring their origins and arrangement and considering how this distinctive feature of the room reflects the ways Japanese art was displayed and experienced in nineteenth-century America.

This research was supported by the Friends of the Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters 2025 Art Research Fellowship Program.

—————————————

Elizabeth K. Eder, Ph.D., is a museum scholar, educator, and researcher who has worked at the Smithsonian Institution for more than 20 years, including at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Museum of Asian Art (formerly the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery), and the Anacostia Community Museum. Her museum career has also included positions at the Walters Art Museum, the National Gallery of Art, and the American Alliance of Museums. Her research interests include nineteenth-century American art; Chinese, Japanese, and European artistic influences on American art; the history of cultural exchange; and women’s histories. Her publications include books, scholarly articles, and museum print and digital resources. She is currently a Research Associate at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and teaches in the Museum Studies Graduate Program at Johns Hopkins University, most recently History and Philosophy of Museums (in Global Context). She is also Principal of Elizabeth K. Eder & Associates LLC, a museum consulting practice.

Families are invited to drop in for a special trick-or-treat kickoff on the front lawn of the Longfellow House! Put on your costume and enjoy treats, crafts, and Halloween history. Free and open to all, recommended for ages 4-12.

In August of 1900, several members of the Longfellow family travelled to Desbarats, Ontario, where they had been invited to attend the first performance of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem Hiawatha put on by members of the Garden River First Nation. These productions, which spread throughout Indigenous communities across Western Ontario and Northern Michigan in the years that followed, featured largely Native actors and were performed in the Anishinaabe language. Analyzing these Hiawatha performances offers a window to explore how Native people reappropriated Western representations to insist on the survival of their own peoples and traditions.

This event will feature two talks about the August 1900 performance based on research done in the collections held by the Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters’ National Historic Site. The first, by Professor Karl Hele, will describe the context and circumstances of the performance. The second, by Professor Alan Corbiere, will look at the use of the Anishinaabe language in the performances and in the material created for the Longfellow family.

Alan Corbiere, Bne wedoodemid (Ruffed Grouse clan), is an Anishinaabe from M'Chigeeng First Nation on Manitoulin Island. He is an assistant professor of history and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous History of North America at York University. His research focuses on Anishinaabe language, oral traditions, and material culture. He has published in the journals Museum Anthropology, the Algonquian Papers, and others, as well as in the edited collection Afterlives of Indigenous Archives: Essays in Honor of the Occom Circle. He has also served as the the Executive Director at the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation and the Anishinaabemowin Revitalization Program Coordinator at Lakeview School, both in M’Chigeeng First Nation.

Karl S. Hele, a member of Garden River First Nation, is a full professor and current Director of Canadian and Indigenous Studies at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. A specialist in Indigenous Studies, he focuses on First Nations history, politics, and law. He is the author of numerous articles and editor of several edited collections, including Engaging Indigenous Communities: Resources, Rebellions, and Resurgence (Aboriginal Issues Press, 2021), This is Indian Land: The Robinson Treaties of 1850 (Aboriginal Issues Press, 2016), and The Nature of Empires and the Empires of Nature: Indigenous Peoples and the Great Lakes Environment (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2013).

This program is made possible by the Mellon Humanities Fellowship Program and Friends of the Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters, Inc.