The Matheson History Museum will host a free curator talk with Willett Hancock, curator of exhibitions, on Wednesday.
The free event starts at 7 p.m. at 513 E. University Ave. in Gainesville. Registration is available at https://mathesonmuseum.networkforgood.com/events/104519-curator-talk.
Hancock will discuss his year-and-a-half of research and curatorial work on “Chains of Steele: Money, Power, and Influence,” an original exhibition examining Augustus and Augusta Steele, two ancestors of Gainesville’s Matheson family, and their relationships with and benefits from the institution of American slavery.
Augustus Steele was born in Massachusetts in 1792, when slavery had been outlawed in the state. By the time of his death, he had become a Confederate official, an advocate for slavery and an enslaver. The exhibition explores the choices that shaped his life and the ways he benefited from those choices.
His only child, Augusta, turned 18 in 1865, the year emancipation reached Florida and the Confederacy collapsed. The exhibition examines the course of her life afterward and what it reveals about the lasting effects of slavery on American history.
“Chains of Steele” features rarely displayed Matheson family photographs, excerpts from the family’s papers and a memorial to the people the Steeles enslaved. It also includes the first biographies written about those individuals.
About the Curator
Hancock graduated from Santa Fe College in 2019 and the University of Florida in 2022 with a double major in history and political science. He wrote his undergraduate thesis on Union Academy, the first legal public school for Black education in Alachua County during the Reconstruction era.
Hancock became the Matheson’s curator of exhibitions in May 2024 and is pursuing a master’s degree in museum studies at the University of Florida. Since joining the museum, he has curated four exhibitions and two displays, including “Weaving a Community: 30 Years at the Matheson History Museum,” “Alachua’s Queer History” and “Chains of Steele: Money, Power and Influence.”