State of the Art: A Q&A With the Smithsonian’s New Religion Curator
At Religion News Service, S. Brent Plate interviews Peter Manseau, the new curator of American religious history at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. As the first permanent curator of religion at the institution, Manseau said, “In all this, my hope is to tell stories about religion that feel inclusive and welcoming, framing the nation’s diverse religious history as a part of everyone’s American experience.” Manseau’s first project is an exhibition called “Religion in Early America,” which “tells the story of what religious freedom, diversity, and growth meant in the Colonial period until the 1840s.”