Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn Connecting the Present with the Past | Page 23

sweet auburn | 2019 volume i
Preservation through Storytelling:
The Role of the Artist in
Interpreting Difficult History
By Peter Schlaht
Advancement Associate
“W
ill it all fade?” Louis Agassiz asks
aloud, pondering his reputation.
“There must be something I can do.
They are considering stripping the name from
other buildings.” Throughout his work-in-
progress play “Namesakes,” Mount Auburn
Cemetery 2018–2019 Artist-in-Residence
Patrick Gabridge ponders the troubled legacy
of one of the Cemetery’s most noted residents,
Louis Agassiz (1807–1873, Lot 1640 Bellwort
Path). Agassiz was a renowned biologist and
geologist in his day and particularly was
credited with the founding of glaciology,
the study of glaciers and other natural ice
formations.
Yet his reputation was tarnished by his
refusal to accept the scientific evidence
for evolution as put forward by Charles
Darwin and other contemporaries, and for
his commitment to racist pseudo-scientific
theories of human origins that were used
for generations to support slavery and
segregation. Recent decades have seen
Agassiz’s name removed from landmarks
and schools as they choose to celebrate
individuals who enabled and supported
societal progress, rather than those like
Agassiz who held it back.
As the Cemetery’s Artist-in-Residence,
Patrick Gabridge is creating plays like
“Namesakes” to explore the multi-faceted
lives and stories of notables buried at Mount
Auburn. Many of these are stories that
heretofore have not been told or that reveal
complex and sometimes difficult sides of
well-known figures. For instance, Jacob
Bigelow (1787–1879, Lot 116 Beech Avenue) is
celebrated for both his role as a founder of the
Cemetery, as a botanist, and as a practitioner
of medicine. He was a man so moved by the
horrors of the American Civil War that he
personally commissioned the Cemetery’s
famous Sphinx monument to commemorate
those lost in that bloody conflict. Yet he was
also one of the noted standouts who refused
to allow women into Harvard Medical School,
believing them to be too delicate and modest
to handle the field’s rigors.
As both a historian and a playwright,
Gabridge presents the stories of Bigelow,
Agassiz, and Mount Auburn’s other notables
as the three-dimensional figures that they
were—both well-meaning and misguided.
Through his plays, we taste the complexity
of history and how we can learn from the
mistakes of the past. In Gabridge’s work,
criticizing the failings of historical figures is
an important tool in preserving their history.
Toward the end of “Namesakes,” one of
Agassiz’s contemporaries, the botanist Asa
Gray (1810–1888, Lot 3904 Holly Path) is asked
if Agassiz was a good man. “Who am I to say?”
he replies. “He was a man. Homo sapiens. He
made his share of mistakes. Maybe it’s not
so bad if the world decides to take a stand
against some of them, even all this time later.”
As both a historian and a playwright,
Mount Auburn Cemetery 2018–2019
Artist-in-Residence Patrick Gabridge
presents the stories of Cemetery
notables as three-dimensional
figures. The graves of geologist
Louis Agassiz and Cemetery
founder Jacob Bigelow; both men
figure prominently in Gabridge’s
plays.
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