Clara Barton Museum

Special Exhibition - "War on Our Doorsteps"
2018-06-21 11:00 - 17:00, 2018-06-16 11:00 - 17:00, 2018-06-15 11:00 - 17:00, 2018-06-14 11:00 - 17:00, 2018-06-09 11:00 - 17:00, 2018-06-08 11:00 - 17:00, 2018-06-07 11:00 - 17:00, 2018-06-02 11:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) and 5 more dates | Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum, 437 7th Street NW, Washington, 20004, United States
When Alexander Gardner’s stunning photographs of the Antietam battlefield were publicly displayed in 1862, they changed how Americans saw war forever. For a limited time, you can relive that sobering exhibition at the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office.
A photograph captured in the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam by Alexander Gardner. (LOC)
“Bringing the War to Our Doorsteps” is a temporary installation restaging the exhibition of Alexander Gardner’s photographs taken at Antietam in September 1862. It is a rare chance for visitors to experience what viewers did more than 155 years ago as the Civil War raged.
Display prints have been made to the same dimensions and style of the originals from high-definition digital files made available by the Library of Congress. To enhance the visitor’s experience, there will be a 3-D theatre to view the photos, which were shot with stereoscopic cameras, in the way they were originally intended. Its purpose is to explore the evolving view of war-time photography from the Civil War to today and how modern media has contributed to American attitudes about armed conflict. The exhibition has been extended through November 3, 2018.
It is staged throughout the Missing Soldiers Office Museum, a space where Clara Barton lived and worked during the Civil War era. From her boardinghouse, she founded the Missing Soldiers Office and assisted thousands of grieving families in the search for their missing loved ones at the conclusion of our nation’s bloodiest conflict.
“It is not [for viewers] to bear witness to the fidelity of views which the truthful sunbeam has delineated in all their dread reality,” wrote Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. after viewing the original exhibition in New York City in 1862. “The sight of these pictures is a commentary on civilization such as the savage might well triumph to show its missionaries.”
Visiting the exhibition is included with admission to the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum and is free for Museum members. The exhibition will be on display until November 3, 2018 and will be available during normal operating hours (11:00am – 5:00pm, Thurs-Sat) and by appointment. Contact Director of Programming Katie Reichard for more information about appointments and group visits: katie.reichard@civilwarmed.org or 301-695-1864.
In addition to the exhibition’s extension, the creator of “Bringing the War to Our Doorsteps,” Bob Kozak, will be speaking about the photographs at the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office on October 4. It is an exploration of how American society portrayed death at the start of the Civil War, how these photos were received in 1862, and how the coverage of war has evolved since the publication of Gardner’s images into the present day.
For more information about the exhibition, contact Jake Wynn at jake.wynn@civilwarmed.org.

Special Exhibition - "The Dead of Antietam"
2018-05-19 11:00 - 17:00, 2018-05-18 11:00 - 17:00, 2018-05-17 11:00 - 17:00, 2018-05-12 08:00 - 17:00, 2018-05-11 11:00 - 17:00, 2018-05-10 11:00 - 17:00, 2018-05-05 11:00 - 17:00, 2018-05-04 11:00 - 17:00 and 6 more dates
When Alexander Gardner’s stunning photographs of the Antietam battlefield were publicly displayed in 1862, they changed how Americans saw war forever. For a limited time, you can relive that sobering exhibition at the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office.
A photograph captured in the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam by Alexander Gardner. (LOC)
On March 1, 2018, the acclaimed exhibition “The Dead of Antietam” will return to the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office in Washington, DC. The exhibit recreates and explores the original photographs taken in the days after the bloodiest day in American history, the Battle of Antietam, on September 17, 1862. When the photographs were first publicly displayed by Mathew Brady in New York in 1862, they shocked a nation and showed the true nature of warfare – the anonymous dead laying row upon row on an American landscape.
“Mr. Brady has done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war,” wrote the New York Times after the original exhibition began in October 1862. “If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our dooryards and along the streets, he has done something very like it.”
Captured by Washington photographer Alexander Gardner, the images changed the perception of war in the United States and continue to reverberate in our own era as we grapple with human consequences of the continuing conflicts around the world. Now you, too, can experience the images that once captivated and horrified a nation in a 19th century setting. The exhibit proves that history repeats itself as it provokes discussion on today’s military censorship of visual images of bodies and casualties returning from war zones.
Visiting the exhibition is included with admission to the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum and is free for Museum members. The exhibition will be on display at the Missing Soldiers Office from March 1, 2018 until May 19, 2018 and will be available during normal operating hours (11:00am – 6:00pm, Thurs-Sat) and by appointment. Contact Reservations Coordinator Katie Reichard for more information about appointments and group visits: katie.reichard@civilwarmed.org or 301-695-1864.
The exhibit restages the original photographic images, allowing visitors to experience what viewers did more than 155 years ago. Display prints have been made to the same dimensions and style of the originals from high-definition Library of Congress digital files. To enhance the visitor’s experience, there will be a 3-D theatre to view the photos, which were shot with stereoscopic cameras, in the way they were originally intended.
Visitors will explore how American society portrayed death at the start of the Civil War, how these photos were received in 1862, and how the coverage of war has evolved since the publication of Gardner’s images into the present day. “The Dead of Antietam” exhibition at the Missing Soldiers Office was created by Bob Kozak.
Gardner’s studio was also an integral part of Clara Barton’s everyday life during the Civil War. Located one block from Barton’s boardinghouse on 7th Street, the studio became a hub of war-time activity as Gardner experimented with new photographic techniques and sold copies of his photographs. Like Gardner, Barton was also on the battlefield at Antietam and witnessed its slaughter firsthand.
For more information about the exhibition, contact Jake Wynn at jake.wynn@civilwarmed.org.

Parental Guidance Necessary - Children Experience the Civil War
2018-05-03 18:00 - 19:00
Discover the Civil War as seen through the eyes of the children who experienced it firsthand.

On May 3, 2018 at the Missing Soldiers Office, historian Kristen Hunter will illuminate some of the ways children in both the North and South experienced the Civil War. The presentation will begin at 6 PM. Admission is “pay-what-you-please.”
Encouraged by their parents and swept up by wartime rhetoric, children romanticized the war and were awe-inspired by their courageous soldiers in blue or gray. With their soldier costumes and toys, young boys adopted soldier personas and acted out battles with their siblings. Some young girls, inspired by the patriotic efforts of their mothers, saved their pennies and knitted socks to send to soldiers in need.
From parading around in soldier costumes and staging mock battles in the yard, to forming gangs and engaging in real battles with rocks, the war greatly impacted the everyday lives of boys and girls in rural areas, cities, and even in the White House.
Kristen Hunter is a recent graduate of George Mason University’s History of Decorative Arts MA program. Her Master’s thesis, “By Her Needle and Thread,” explored how women used material objects of their production to influence how their family experienced the Civil War.

The Freedmen's Bureau in Virginia
2018-04-19 18:00 - 19:00
Hear the remarkable story of the Freedmen’s Bureau in war-torn Virginia after the Civil War.
Freedmen’s Bureau office in Richmond, VA. (Harper’s Weekly, December 23, 1865)
Emmanuel Dabney will discuss the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (usually referred to as the Freedmen’s Bureau) work in Virginia in the aftermath of the Civil War at the Missing Soldiers Office on April 19, 2018 at 6 PM. The presentation will be “pay-what-you-please.”
The Freedmen’s Bureau was created in March 1865 to oversee the abandoned property of Southerners and provide aid to white Unionist refugees and the recently freed people. However, competing viewpoints from white Republicans, Democrats, and black and white Southerners created much disappointment for the recently freed people, who pretty rapidly took up most of the Bureau’s time and effort.
Despite racialized violence, the Bureau was able to provide some assistance to the freed people and help lay the groundwork for their futures in the aftermath of generations of enslavement and their own resistance to slavery.
Emmanuel Dabney is the curator at Petersburg National Battlefield in Petersburg, Virginia.

Special Exhibition - "War On Our Doorsteps"
2018-04-19 11:00 - 17:00
