It was pouring rain on February 1st when Averee McNear arrived in town to start her new job at the Kelley House, and it’s been pretty much nonstop for a week now, but she claims it hasn’t diluted her eagerness to settle in. Moist gloom is part of the Mendocino vibe, after all, so she’s determined to make it her friend. Most recently, she lived in Orange County, so this move is a big change, both in ecosystem and culture, but museum work is her dream job and here she is!
Averee McNear getting acquainted with the Kelley House collection
In a sense, McNear’s relocating to Mendocino is a bit like returning home since she grew up in a small town in south central Illinois: Pana, the City of Roses, which boasts a Civil War monument and fountain in Kitchell Park as well as the Pana Heritage Museum. Instead of redwood forests, Pana is surrounded by corn and soybean fields, but life there has similar rhythms to ours here. After high school, McNear matriculated at McKendree University in Lebanon, another small town in Illinois, about 25 miles east of Saint Louis, where she majored in history with an eye toward becoming a high school teacher.
However, two stints as a student teacher in elementary and high school classrooms convinced her that her future lay not in public schools, but in public history, a practice rooted in the areas of archival science, historic preservation, oral history, and museum curatorship. She loved research and writing, and had always been enchanted by the house museum in Pana, and those in nearby Springfield and Decatur (Abraham Lincoln country), where she had the had the sense of “walking through someone’s home as if they had only briefly left and would return home soon.” She decided that museum work would allow her to be enthralled with her job and to share her enjoyment and knowledge with others.
After earning her B.A. in History, McNear left Illinois to pursue a Master’s Degree in Museum Studies at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, where the excellent program would give her many of the skills she needed. While at OSU, she was involved in a number of projects and internships, among them the Stillwater History Museum, where she co-curated an exhibit on local military history, and the Hinsdale County History Museum, in Lake City, Colorado, the home town of one of her professors, where she and other students created social media posts to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the organization and raise funds for it.
Her most memorable work was with the Seminole Nation Museum in Wewoka, OK, where she led research on Black Seminole history and incorporated the information into existing exhibits and a central research document. As part of her study, she interviewed five Black alumni of Wewoka’s segregated schools, and developed an abiding interest in collecting often untold stories and integrating them in more widely known local history. McNear’s thesis explored the connections between Black public libraries, the public library movement, and 20th century civil rights history. As segregated institutions, Black libraries were places of activism in broadening archival collections, expanding librarian education, and securing voting rights.
McNear and Anne Semans, the Kelley House Director, plan to maintain and expand programs with the local schools, and hope to continue work with all the groups in the county involved in archival work and historic preservation. Being herself a computer-savvy young woman, she is committed to making displays as interactive as possible to engage both adults and children in local history and culture.
When I asked McNear why she was interested in pursuing her career here in Northwest Nowhere, she responded, “While so many history books have presidents and generals on their covers, I think the history of local places, people, and events is just as (if not more) important. I want to shine a light on stories that people connect with.”
The Kelley House Museum is open from 11AM to 3PM Friday through Sunday. To speak with the new curator about anything historical, contact her at curator@kelleyhousemuseum.org to make an appointment. Walking Tours of Mendocino are available throughout the week; the cost is $25. Visit the Kelley House Event Calendar for a Walking Tour schedule.