Get Outside and Get Moving with Hagley’s Summer Bike and Hike Program

CONTACT: Meg Marcozzi, Hagley Museum and Library Marketing Manager

                         (302) 658-2400, ext. 238    mmarcozzi@hagley.org

Get Outside and Get Moving with Hagley’s Summer Bike and Hike Program

                Wilmington, Delaware – July and August 2013 – When the summer sun starts heating up, cool down at Hagley Museum and Library during Bike and Hike, every Wednesday evening, 5 to 8 p.m., in July and August. Our 235-acre riverside landscape offers a shady retreat for walkers, hikers, and bikers. Admission is $2 per person and free for members. Dates are July 3, 10, 17, 24, 31 and August 7, 14, 21, and 28.

                Wander along the most beautiful mile on the Brandywine or through wooded trails above the powder yard. During Bike and Hike, visitors will have access to the entire three-mile loop from the Visitor Center to Eleutherian Mills, the du Pont ancestral home. 

                Bring your family! Hagley’s 235-acre property is open to walkers and bikers but closed to traffic so it is an ideal spot for kids biking with training wheels and riding in strollers. Throughout the season there will be fun family activities like scavenger hunts, leaf rubbings, and other nature-related activities. Hagley will also host other local community organizations that will provide education and fun for families: Urban Bike Project on July 10 and August 21, Delaware Bicycle Council on July 17, and Woodside Creamery on July 24.

                Picnic in one of our wooded areas or enjoy dinner on the porch of the Belin House Organic Café. The Belin House Organic Café is located on Workers’ Hill approximately half a mile from the Visitor Center. The café features seasonal menus that include simple, prepared items made from farm-fresh, locally-grown, organic ingredients.

                Worried about the weather? New this year are rain dates for Bike and Hike.  The rain dates are every Thursday in July and August (excluding July 4): July 11, 18, 25 and August 1, 8, 15, 22, and 29. Weather postponement decisions  will be made by 3 p.m. and will be posted at www.hagley.org.

                At Hagley, we invite people of all ages to investigate and experience the unfolding history of American business, technology, and innovation, and its impact on the world, from our home at the historic DuPont powder yards on the banks of the Brandywine.Hagley is located on Route 141 in Wilmington, Delaware. GPS Address: 200 Hagley Road. For more information, call (302) 658-2400 weekdays or visit www.hagley.org.

Hagley Creek Kids Family Programs Feature Hands-on History, by Kids, for Kids

CONTACT:  Meg Marcozzi, Marketing Manager

                                (302) 658-2400, ext, 238  mmarcozzi@hagley.org

Hagley Creek Kids Family Programs Feature Hands-on History, by Kids, for Kids

Wilmington, Delaware – May through August 2013 – Hagley Museum and Library’s youth leadership program, Creek Kids, returns to Hagley this summer for six dates of family programming.  Join these high school students for afternoons filled with fun like exploring river wildlife in leaf packs, fishing in the Brandywine, and launching bottle rockets! Summer programs include A Day in the Life on May 18, The Natural World on June 15, Black Powder on July 16 and July 20, and Innovation and Power on August 13 and 17. Activities are 1 to 4 p.m., and are included in regular admission. Members are free.

                Hagley Creek Kids Youth Leadership program offer hands-on activities that explore history, science, technology, and innovation.   In A Day in the Life (May 18), families can imagine themselves living in the nineteenth century and try doing chores and playing games. Get down and dirty with Hagley’s natural resources during The Natural World on June 15. Families can fish in the Brandywine and learn about river ecology. Black Powder on July 16 and 20 will focus on the science behind black powder.  A cannon will be fired, and kids can explore a military camp. The heat of August brings Innovation and Power on August 13 and 17. Kids can shoot bottle rockets and learn about innovation in the Hagley Powder Yards.

                Creek Kids is sponsored, in part, by PBF Energy/Delaware City Refinery Company, Mercer Health & Benefits Company, and Nordstrom, Inc.

About Hagley Creek Kids Program

                Hagley Creek Kids program started in 2001 as a youth volunteer program and was developed into today’s youth leadership and development program in 2007. Currently, there are twenty two high school students, six mentors, and one intern in the program. Students work approximately ninety hours to plan, develop, and implement six public programs.

About Hagley Museum and Library

The museum is located on Route 141 in Wilmington, Delaware. Admission to the entire 235-acre museum is $14 for adults, $10 for students and senior citizens, $5 for children six to fourteen, and free for members and children five and under.

                At Hagley, we invite people of all ages to investigate and experience the unfolding history of American business, technology, and innovation, and its impact on the world, from our home at the historic DuPont powder yards on the banks of the Brandywine.

For more information, call 302-685-2400 weekdays or visit www.hagley.org.

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CONTACT:  Meg Marcozzi, Marketing Manager

(302) 658-2400, ext. 238         mmarcozzi@hagley.org

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Summer Sun brings Summer Fun to Hagley Museum and Library

            Wilmington, Delaware – Summer 2012 – Take a respite from the heat at Hagley. This summer there are many reasons to visit.

Hagley’s Creek Kids offer afternoons filled with educational fun for families. Make slime, fish in the Brandywine, explore, and enjoy! Summer programs include Innovation on the Brandywine on May 20, The Natural World on June 24, Black Powder on July 17 and July 22, and A Day in the Life on August 7 and 12. Activities are 12:30 to 4 p.m., and are included in regular admission. Members are free.

The Libby Prison Minstrels return to Hagley on Monday, July 9, 6 p.m., for a command performance to mark the conclusion of Hagley’s year-long commemoration of the Civil War. Guests can enjoy an outdoor performance of Civil War era music and entertainment in the historic setting of Workers’ Hill. Bring a picnic. Bring the family. There will be fun for all! The Belin House Organic Café will be open. Admission is $2 for members, $3 for not-yet-members, and children five and under are admitted free. In the event of rain or excessive heat, please check our website for change of venue information. Reservations are appreciated at (302) 658-2400.

Get outside and get moving on Wednesday evenings in July (11,18, 25, no program on the 4^th) and August (1, 8, 15, 22, 29) at Hagley’s Bike and Hike. From 5 to 8 p.m., Hagley’s property is open for walking, hiking, and biking. Wander along the most beautiful mile on the Brandywine or through wooded trails above the powder yard. Picnic in one of our wooded areas or enjoy dinner on the porch of the Belin House Organic Café. Special programs include the Golden Pheasants Ice Cream Social and Bat Chat on July 25 with Hagley Executive Director Geoff Halfpenny who will repeat the Bat Chat on August 15. On Both July 25 and August 15 Bike and Hike will stay open until 9 p.m. Details at www.hagley.org. The property is closed to vehicle traffic. Admission is $2 per person, free for members and children 5 and under.

“Why venture farther afield when Hagley has so much to offer: history, science, technology, engineering, horticulture and natural beauty. Once you’ve experienced Hagley, we know that you’ll return. Enjoy!” says Geoff Halfpenny, executive director of Hagley Museum and Library.

The museum is located on Route 141 in Wilmington, Delaware. Admission to the entire 235-acre museum is $11 for adults, $9 for students and senior citizens, $4 for children six to fourteen, and free for members and children five and under.

Hagley Museum and Library collects, preserves, and interprets the unfolding history of American enterprise. For more information, call (302) 658-2400 weekdays or visit www.hagley.org.

     

NatureFest at Hagley Encourages Kids to Explore, Experience, and Enjoy our Environment

CONTACT:  Meg Marcozzi, Marketing Manager

                          (302) 658-2400, ext. 238  mmarcozzi@hagley.org

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NatureFest at Hagley Encourages Kids to Explore, Experience, and Enjoy our Environment

Wilmington, Delaware- April 2012- Hagley Museum and Library presents a new spring event, NatureFest, on Saturday, April 28. NatureFest combines Arbor Day, Earth Day, and May Day celebrations. Hagley’s upper property will host hands-on activities and crafts for families from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Admission to NatureFest is $2 for members, $3 for not-yet members, and free for children five and under. Please use Buck Road Entrance off Route 100. NatureFest is an outdoor event, held rain or shine. Please dress appropriately for outdoor fun.

            Below is a sample of the activities offered at NatureFest:

·         Nature Walks: Visitors will be guided on nature walks in honor of the du Pont family’s annual tradition of searching for the first signs of spring at Hagley.*

·         Tours:  Experience E. I. du Pont’s formal French Garden; the Eleutherian Mills greenhouses; and Hagley’s champion trees, led by Hagley’s knowledgeable gardens and grounds staff.

·         Tree Climbing: Using a climbing harness, kids can scale one of Hagley’s trees.

·         Leaf Rubbings: Children will make rubbings from leaf plates and match them to trees on Hagley’s property.

·         Floriography: Families will discover a Victorian cipher tradition by creating tissue paper flowers in a variety of colors to send a “secret message.”

·         Capillary Action Experiment: Young scientists and their parents can see how capillaries work to transport water throughout a plant.

*Nature hikes are not suitable for strollers or people with difficulty walking.

            NatureFest will also feature hands-on activities, experiments, and displays by the American Chemical Society, 4-H, Girl Scouts of the USA, and Boy Scouts of America.

The Belin House Organic Café will be selling a selection of family-friendly outdoor favorites. Highlights of the menu include hamburgers, hotdogs, and Portobello mushroom burgers, fruit salad, blueberry lemonade, and more.

Hagley Museum and library collects, preserves, and interprets the unfolding history of American enterprise. For more information, call 302-685-2400 weekdays or visit www.hagley.org.

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Community Celebration of Edward Loper, Sr., Debuts Film on his Life

CONTACT: Meg Marcozzi, Marketing Manager

                     (302) 658-2400, ext. 238    mmarcozzi@hagley.org

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Community Celebration of Edward Loper, Sr., Debuts Film on his Life

            Wilmington, Delaware – April 2012 – Hagley Museum and Library invites the community to the Celebration of Edward Loper, Sr., on Sunday, April 29, 2 p.m., at the Baby Grand Theater in Wilmington. A new film, Conversation with Edward Loper: African American Painter, based on oral history interviews with the late Edward Loper, Sr., will be shown, followed by remarks from University of Delaware Professor Emeritus Dr. James Newton, and a light reception. Admission is free and families are welcome.

            This event is a collaboration of the Christina Cultural Arts Center, Delaware Heritage Commission, Delaware Humanities Forum, Delaware Historical Society, and Hagley Museum and Library.

About the Film

            In Conversation with Edward Loper: African American Painter , Mr. Loper reflects on growing up in Delaware, his education at Howard High School, early influences on his painting, and his painting philosophy. He is painting through much of the interview, filmed on a sunny, crisp fall day in Wilmington’s Brandywine Park. The footage is interspersed with stills of Mr. Loper's paintings, historic Delaware scenes (such as the Allied Kid leather factory where Loper worked as a young man) and famous national figures mentioned in the interview, such as Horace Pippin, Alain Locke , and Aaron Douglas.

            Conversation with Edward Loper: African American Painter is a short film created from a 1998 interview with Mr. Loper filmed as part of research for the film, A Separate Place: The Schools P.S. du Pont Built (2003).  

            DVDs of Conversation with Edward Loper: African American Painter will be available for sale at this event.

About Edward Loper, Sr.

Edward Loper, Sr., 1947

            Edward Loper, Sr., who passed away on October 11, 2011, was born on the east side of Wilmington on April 7, 1916, and lived in Delaware for his entire life. From 1936 to 1941, Loper worked for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Art Project, a New Deal program designed to provide work for unemployed artists. He then took a job at the Allied Kid leather tanning factory in Wilmington and continued painting after working hours. In 1947, he became a full-time art instructor. Loper taught at the Delaware Art Museum, Lincoln University, and Wilmington's Jewish Community Center, in addition to other places. His paintings are found in many of the nation's most prestigious art collections including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., Howard University, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and Clark-Atlanta University Collection of African-American Art. Locally, Loper's paintings are found in the collections of the Delaware Art Museum, the Biggs Museum, the University of Delaware's Paul R. Jones Collection of African-American Art, as well as private collections.

Hagley Museum and Library collects, preserves, and interprets the unfolding history of American enterprise. Hagley is located on Route 141 in Wilmington, Delaware. For more information, call (302) 658-2400 weekdays or visit www.hagley.org

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Hagley Makes Film on African American Education in Delaware Available Online

CONTACT: Meg Marcozzi, Marketing Manager

                     (302) 658-2400, ext. 238    mmarcozzi@hagley.org

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

            Wilmington, Delaware – Hagley Museum and Library announces that its film, A Separate Place: The Schools P.S. du Pont Built (2003), is available for viewing and downloading at www.hagley.org/separateplace/index.html.  A Separate Place: The Schools P.S. du Pont Built presents the connection between Pierre S. du Pont’s philanthropy and efforts by African Americans to obtain quality education in Delaware.

            “The era of racial segregation is a deplorable episode in our nation’s history,” said Hagley staff member Roger Horowitz, one of the film’s producers. “A Separate Place tells an uplifting story of how P. S. du Pont and the Black community in Delaware came together to create better education for young African Americans during those difficult times.”

            The voices of former students and teachers in the du Pont schools provide most of the film’s content, supplemented by commentary from Dr. Jeanne Nutter, the film’s executive producer and herself a product of a du Pont-built school. A shortened 25 minute version of A Separate Place, intended for elementary and middle school students, is available along with the full 53 minute film.

            A Teacher’s Guide, produced by Hagley’s Education Department, may be viewed and downloaded from the website. The guide supplements the film, especially for school use, with documents from Hagley’s research collections, such as before and after pictures of African American schools and letters from children to P.S. du Pont written in the 1920s.

            Directed by Alonzo Crawford and edited by Kendrick Simmons, A Separate Place is a production of the Hagley Museum and Library. It was generously funded by the Longwood Foundation with partial support from the Delaware Humanities Forum, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Hagley.

            The Hagley Library is the nation’s leading business history library, archive, and research center. Current holdings comprise 37,000 linear feet in the Manuscripts and Archives Department, 290,000 printed volumes in the Imprints Department, 2 million visual items in the Pictorial Department, and more than 200,000 digital images and pages in the Digital Archives Department.  Hagley’s Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society, which coordinated production of A Separate Place, offers conferences, research seminars, and a public lecture series, and operates a research grant program.

Hagley Museum and Library collects, preserves, and interprets the unfolding history of American enterprise. Hagley is located in Wilmington, Delaware. For more information, call (302) 658-2400 weekdays or visit www.hagley.org

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Hagley Concert Features Civil War Era Music

Wilmington, Delaware – September 2011 – Hagley Museum and Library welcomes the Libby Prison Minstrels to the Soda House on Wednesday, September 29, 2011, at 7 p.m. to perform music from the Civil War era. Admission is free. Use Hagley’s Buck Road East entrance off Route 100 in Wilmington, Delaware.

The Libby Prison Minstrels is a five-piece band with guitars, banjo, mandolins, bass, harmonica, whistles and percussion that feature three-part harmony.  It is modeled after a group of Union prisoners who performed in the infamous Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia, during the Civil War. The band’s repertoire includes soldier songs (North and South), Irish-American ballads, sea shanties, spirituals, period fiddle tunes, and Early American dance music.

The Hagley Civil War education series will continue in October with historian Justin Carisio, and his lecture, " Quaker Soldier: The Civil War Experience of Henry Gawthrop of the 4^th Delaware;" and December with Jane Peters Estes, and her presentation of “Christmas Past,” which will explore the origins of many of our holiday traditions and highlights Christmas customs observed during the Civil War.

The current Hagley exhibit in the Visitor Center, “An Oath of Allegiance to the Republic: the du Ponts and the Civil War,” explores the roles played by several du Pont family members, E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Co., and the local community in response to the Civil War. It also delves into their involvement at the state, national, and international levels in resolving the most devastating conflict Americans have ever seen.

Hagley Museum and Library collects, preserves, and interprets the unfolding history of American enterprise. For more information, call (302) 658-2400 weekdays or visit www.hagley.org.

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Explore the Brandywine with Hagley’s Creek Kids

            Wilmington, Delaware – August 2011 – Join Hagley’s Creek Kids for two afternoons along the Brandywine, Tuesday, August 16, and Sunday, August 21, from 1 to 4 p.m. Today we can access power with a flip of a switch, run to the grocery store to pick up food for dinner, and stop by the shopping mall if we need new socks or a shirt. Life in the nineteenth century was not the same. Come watch, learn, and experience how the people who lived and worked along the Brandywine depended on natural elements for their daily tasks. From growing fruits and vegetables in gardens to using water from the Brandywine to power the mills, the environment of the Brandywine was a vital part of this community. Activities are included in admission and free for members.

            The afternoons’ activities will explore the natural world of the Brandywine. Parents and children can try their hands at fishing with a bamboo pole or take a walking tour of the water power process. Local artisans will be discussing textile arts and demonstrating the use of old-fashioned spinning and weaving wheels. Other activities will include making lavender sachets, peeling willow branches, and learning about the Workers’ Garden.

Hagley's Creek Kids is a youth leadership and development program. High school students undergo extensive training from November through August to learn how to develop and implement a public program. Training includes lessons on leadership, instruction in history and science content, brainstorming and planning session, and hands-on exercises. Students apply this training during public programs at Hagley.

            The Creek Kids program is supported, in part, by Capital Growth Management, LP., and Mercer Health & Benefits Company.

The museum is located on Route 141 in Wilmington, Delaware. Admission to the entire 235-acre museum is $11 for adults, $9 for students and senior citizens, $4 for children six to fourteen, and free for members and children five and under.

Hagley Museum and Library collects, preserves, and interprets the unfolding history of American enterprise. Call (302) 658-2400 weekdays for more information or visit www.hagley.org.

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