(upbeat music) - [Narrator] There is an extraordinary collection of plaster cast duplicates here of some of the most iconic sculptures in the world.

We'll examine a letter that offers insight into the mood of the nation after the assassination of President Lincoln.

And later, the inner workings of an 18th century grist mill are revealed.

This is "Treasures Inside the Museum".

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (gentle music) Tucked away on the campus of the Norwich Free Academy in nearby Connecticut is a museum that serves the school and the community.

This historic building is home to the Slater Memorial Museum, an institution dedicated to the richness and diversity of the human experience through art and history.

- The history of Norwich Free Academy is a really storied and powerful history, and essentially, in 1854, a group of philanthropists, a group of community leaders, came together, and they had this, what we call now a wildcat of an idea, of a school devoid of politics, a school that was centered around the needs of a community, and a school where we really focus on what kids need.

- Having Slater Memorial Museum on our campus makes all the difference in the education we're able to provide our students.

- This is one of the most unique museums you can ever visit in the whole country.

We are uniquely positioned on the campus of Norwich Free Academy, and Norwich Free Academy is one of only two high schools to have a museum on their campus.

So that really puts us in a special and unique position.

- Our students can feel pride in their community in a whole different way.

They can see the roots of so many important things around us in our community.

And to access these resources really brings history to life for our students.

- When the museum first opened up, Norwich was at its industrial apex, and we became dotted with many different mill villages all throughout the city, and we became a community that was defined by immigrant workforces coming to live and work and make a living here.

But what makes it special is that Norwich Free Academy and Slater Museum became a public resource, not just to the students here, but also to the community.

These are people that worked in the mills, that worked in the factories, that didn't have the means, like the Slater family, to go traveling throughout the world and be enriched by artwork in museums in Europe and abroad.

But they did have this museum.

They had this museum, where they could go and become enriched by culture.

- [Narrator] Since 1886, the museum has exhibited objects and artwork spanning several thousand years of human civilization.

Today, the collection includes more than 10,000 pieces and represents the cultures of five continents.

(upbeat music) Visitors here will find several permanent galleries.

One such space focuses on pieces that were made in Norwich, featuring early American furniture and a collection of clocks.

Nearby, a tall ship's exhibit features a model of the USS Confederacy, Connecticut's continental frigate, that once made its home in Norwich.

Another gallery features a collection of East Asian artifacts, including Japanese and Chinese works.

Africa is on full display in an exhibit that showcases cultural objects from all across the continent.

African art, masks, and other three dimensional pieces reflect the diversity of the many different countries and cultures.

(upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) The African gallery also features several plaster casts made from the originals that date back to the ancient world.

These plaster casts are actually part of a much larger extraordinary exhibit here.

- We are looking at the crown jewel of the collection here at Slater Museum, and that is our collection of plaster casts in an exhibition we have titled Casts of the Ancient World.

(gentle music) This is one of the largest collections of plaster casts that you can find in the entire region, and it features over 100 individual life size and larger than life size plaster casts, meaning that they're duplicates of some very famous works of art from Greco-Roman statuary.

(gentle music continues) The collection came here and was formally unveiled in November of 1888 when the museum opened to the public, and it's here because when the building was being constructed, the founders, including NFA Head of School, Dr. Robert Porter Keep, were trying to figure out a good use for the building.

And originally, there was gymnasium space being planned for the main galleries of what became the museum, but Dr. Keep entered the discussion and shifted it, and he said, "Instead of a gymnasium, what if we were to install a collection of artwork that we can use to educate the students and enrich the lives of students with artwork and culture?"

And that's exactly what they did.

They hired a gentleman by the name of Edward Robinson from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and Mr. Robinson was responsible for selecting literally all of the individual sculptures that are found in museums all across the world to be duplicated using plaster molds.

And they duplicated each of the original sculptures and created this collection of plaster cast duplicates.

And that was formally unveiled on November of 1888.

(gentle music continues) When one comes in here, they're greeted by an incredibly large and imposing collection, and sometimes people walk in and they feel like they're walking into the Met or they're walking into one of these other very large museums that you can visit throughout the country.

And in many ways, the collection and how it's arranged does make you feel like you're in a smaller version of the Met or something very similar.

And it's always the same reaction from people, whether they've been in here before or if this is their first time visiting, they come in and they're just awestruck by the beauty and the majesty of this collection.

This is an irreplaceable collection.

You can't duplicate artwork like this anymore.

And that's what makes this incredibly special for us.

When we talk about the value of this collection, it's important to note that even though each of these casts are duplicates, they themselves take on a significance, because literally, we couldn't reproduce this collection even if we wanted to.

There are literal laws and regulations that prevent the duplication of artwork like this.

But this was a common way years and years ago in order to create collections for learning opportunities.

The duplication of artwork was a common way of being able to educate the public using not just the originals, but using duplicates of those.

And we still fulfill that original purpose to this day.

(gentle music continues) - [Narrator] Casts of the ancient world are on permanent display at the Slater Memorial Museum.

It's a place where one can pause and reflect on the values and tastes of another culture during an earlier chapter of human history.

Students who attend school here have the added advantage of their classrooms extending into these gallery spaces.

- If you're a student here and you're taking history class or you're taking an art class, you have the opportunity to learn from the collections that we have here and be inspired by this global collection of artwork.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] The collection here is so extensive that not every piece is on exhibit.

But on special occasions, a rare treasure emerges from the shadows.

It's always a delicate balance for a museum between safely storing rare archives and putting them out on display.

The moving process can be the riskiest part of the equation.

- So this is the Ansel Adams Yosemite Valley Portfolio number three, and Slater Memorial Museum has portfolio number 141 out of 200 ever made.

(gentle music continues) So we have a collection of 16 original prints by Ansel Adams, and he has signed all of these.

He believed that this portfolio three in particular was a self portrait, you know, through landscapes.

So they were all places that were meaningful to him, places that really resonated with him.

So we have El Capitan from Yosemite Valley.

These were all published by the Sierra Club and printed in 1959.

They're not only signed by him, but they're also organized in a specific order.

This is Snow on Pines.

And the set contains 16 original prints.

We love this one 'cause it really kind of reminds us of "Starry Night".

This is the Tunnel View, one of his most famous prints.

It's pretty amazing to think that Ansel Adams was in the darkroom developing these himself.

He was a master of photography.

And to think that Ansel Adams was in the darkroom touching these prints and then putting them on map board is a really special experience for a photographer and a photography teacher.

And I always explain it as a religious experience to be able to go and see these prints up close and personal, to be able to look at the range of values within the images, and look at a subject matter and kind of see Ansel Adams within each image.

- [Narrator] Also included in the collection of documents and manuscripts is a letter from a pivotal moment in American history.

- We are looking at a letter that was penned by Lafayette Foster, a very distinguished citizen and politician from Norwich, Connecticut, on the occasion of the passing of President Lincoln.

At that time, Lafayette Foster was the president of the Senate, the president pro tem of the Senate, and became, on the occasion of Lincoln's passing, the acting vice president of the United States.

This letter is his letter of condolence to the First Lady, and expresses the sorrow of the Senate and actually, really, also the nation.

- [Narrator] "Washington, April 18th, 1865.

Madam, the members of the Senate and House of Representatives, at an informal meeting held yesterday by them in this city, unanimously passed certain resolutions in respect to the recent terrible events, which has closed our land in mourning and filled the hearts of the people with grief."

- I think about the fact that Foster and Lincoln were contemporaries.

Lafayette Foster was just three years older than Abraham Lincoln.

They came up together.

They would've experienced a lot of the same trials and tribulations, of course, the Civil War together.

And that Foster was a very trusted and loyal confidant of the presidents.

And I think for him, the loss is also very personal.

It's so important for us to have a letter like this in the collection because it is one of the essential pieces that ties our region, our city's history, to the national story.

(gentle music) My students really love to see letters like this, and we often joke, like, what would this letter look like if it was written as a text message today?

Or if it was, you know, something they might find as a post on social media.

And they usually get a good chuckle about that.

But they do have to think that the way they communicate today is the way history will be studied in the future.

Just like this letter helps us study, you know, the history of the the 19th century, the way they communicate today will be the way we study history in the future.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - [Narrator] There are many local and regional paintings on display that are a part of the museum's permanent collection.

Each piece helps to tell a story that has been carefully curated, including several works from an illustrator and artist with ties to the school here.

- This painting is one of over 20 that we have in the collection by artist Harry Rossoll.

Mr. Rossoll had the honor of taking art classes here at Norwich Free Academy with the Norwich Arts School, and he ended up leaving before graduation, so he never ended up graduating from NFA, but he was always very proud to have been recommended to take art classes under a teacher such as Charlotte Fuller Eastman and others.

And this is one of his paintings that he did as a professional artist a little bit later in life, and it's one of over 20 that he donated to Slater Museum as as a gift to the museum.

Harry Rossoll was both an artist and an illustrator.

He is someone that made his art his career.

Harry Rossoll had did an interview and said that his father originally wanted him to go to agriculture school and become a chicken farmer, and Rossoll did not want to go that route at all.

He started drawing around age nine and discovered that he really loved drawing, he really loved sketching and doing art, and that's how he got recommended to come to art school here at NFA.

This particular scene shows a young boy, and he's reading a book in a comic shop.

This doesn't take place in America.

It actually takes place in Mexico.

What Mr. Rossoll loved doing is he loved traveling, and he would paint different scenes that he would see in other parts of the world.

So, many of the paintings that we have focus on subjects that he has seen from all over the world, and we have several that come from Central America specifically.

So we don't know exactly who this young boy is, but Mr. Rossoll saw him and decided to capture that likeness, to capture that moment, of seeing this young boy reading in the comic shop.

And he's included a beautiful palette of light and different colors to really show the vibrance of the different types of books and comics that you see here, and even went so far as to put a little detail of a dropped shopping bag right on the bottom here.

We don't know why it's there, but somehow it got left there.

- [Narrator] Today, this painting joins the many others that have become part of the collection at the Slater Memorial Museum, collections that preserve the past and inspire the future.

(gentle music) (upbeat music) (gentle ethereal music) On a crisp, cool morning, a gentle fog has gathered over a small pond in southern Rhode Island, and as the temperature warms up, the morning sunlight begins to dance off the water.

The cool nights and long shadows are a signal that the growing season will soon be coming to an end.

The busiest of the old farming days in this region may be gone, but the stories of a once thriving grist mill, fueled by this pond, are still being told.

- The grist mill was started by Samuel E. Perry, who was born in Massachusetts and came here as a young man in the late 17th century.

There's a deed where he planned to dam a river so that it would create a pond to operate a grist mill.

So we know that by 1702, there were plans to build a grist mill here.

When he died in 1716, he passed it on to his oldest son.

So, sometime between 1702 and 1716, this grist mill was built.

(birds chirping) - This was all wetlands.

And the Perry family, who owned the grist mill in 1703, was a land investor, and he saw this, and I guess he evidently saw the potential of harnessing this water.

- [Narrator] This mill pond has been the source of power for a grist mill on this site for more than three centuries.

The mill itself has been passed down through several families, who have kept it in continuous operation as a business, and since 1985, as a hands-on working tribute to the community's agricultural past.

In 2012, the site became a part of the South Kingstown Land Trust.

- It's not a museum piece, it's a working structure, and it always has been, and we will do everything to keep it that way, you know?

So it's not just...

When you come in, you're seeing something truly authentic.

I think the important thing about the grist mill is not so much the integrity of the structure, because there's very little that's original that's left to it, but what is important is it operates the same way that it did in the 18th century.

It's a community center, and there's participation at all different levels.

- [Narrator] To tell the complete story, a small garden has been planted at the site.

It's another opportunity to enrich the visitor experience with a little bit of history.

- The Indians taught us how to prepare to grow the corn.

They used the three sisters.

Each one had something to contribute.

The beans, the squash, and the corn.

- The three sisters in our history are good sisters.

They work together.

Corn bean, of course, the tallest of the three sisters, help the bean sister up off the ground by letting the bean wrap around the stalk.

Return, bean takes food from the soil and feeds it to the corn, and maybe that's why the corn's so tall.

And then of course, the third sister, squash, has these big leaves that she used to cover the ground, and that helps keeps the moisture and a lot of the pests away.

So, three sisters working in harmony.

- This is what you want.

It's called Rhode Island cap flint corn.

It has a perfect cap on the top and bottom.

- This corn is easy to identify because it has eight perfect rows that goes around.

So if you count this, you'll find that there's eight columns in this corn.

And also, it's really hard.

It's not a soft corn.

It's not a corn that you eat right off the cob, per se.

Our ancestors usually would take the best seeds from this corn, and they would save it.

There were certain seeds they would save for the following year for planting.

It's so special in so many different ways.

Some years, we grow it as a food.

Other years, we grow it as a medicine.

What I mean by that is when we grow it, we give it all away.

And the idea behind that is the following spring, the folks that we give it to will come back and help us plant this corn in the field.

So as our field grows, our community grows with it.

- People all over would come and bring their corn to their favorite miller.

And the miller's job is to make sure he gives the customer what he wants, the texture in the corn and stuff like that.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] To step into the old mill is like walking back in time into another century.

There are examples of what the finished product would've looked like, all packaged and ready to find its way into a local shop.

Other artifacts include some of the tools that millers would've used.

- This is a shelling machine that we've had here at the Land Trust.

We've brought it back into use, trying to show the people how much fun this can be, shelling corn.

This was how you get the kernels off the cob.

Very simple.

It's just you use a centrifugal force once you get this thing turning.

And it's really a two man job.

One person's turning it.

You get it going up.

(machine whirring) (corn rattling) You can shell a lot of corn in a very short time.

(corn rattling) - [Narrator] As soon as the dust settles, the centuries-old process of milling corn begins with the harnessing of power from water upstream.

- When we want the water to operate the grist mill, we open this gate.

(water trickling) - Where I'm standing here is essentially the heart of the mill.

You can see the shaft that runs straight vertical here.

That is attached, directly attached, to the top of the turbine.

And then through this belt pulley system, it drives the stone.

(water rushing) We open up the gate, and the water slowly trickles in till we develop 14 feet of water.

At that point, we open up the valve into the turbine, and it starts to spin the 2,700 pound stone.

- [Kevin] So I'll listen to the sound.

You can hear the stones start turning.

The miller on top, Rob Lyons, he's controlling the flow.

- So this hopper here, when you're doing a full production, you know, the guy was doing it all day, he would feed the hopper and he would throw a whole bag of corn right in here, and that would self adjust itself.

But it's easier when we're doing small batches just to hand feed it.

- [Narrator] There are no gauges or dials here.

Everything is measured using your senses.

- [Rob] Yeah, it's still coarse.

Drop it a little bit.

- [Narrator] As the process continues, visitors are encouraged to roll up their sleeves and immerse themselves into the experience.

- All right, do you wanna sift this with me?

Come on over here.

Let's shake it back and forth.

- [Narrator] The experience comes full circle when the fresh cornmeal is made into johnnycakes right outside the mill.

- [Julia] When that water comes down the sluiceway and the wheels start turning, it's like the building comes alive, and you really feel like you're getting an authentic experience of the 18th century.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (gentle music) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] This program and other episodes of "Treasures Inside the Museum", as well as digital extras, are now available to watch anytime by visiting rhodeislandpbs.org or the Rhode Island PBS YouTube channel.

Take a private tour with exhibit curators, get an inside look at the conservation process, and go behind the scenes to see hidden treasures.

Whether you are interested in artifacts, paintings, photography, architecture, or history, you'll be inspired to learn more.