Tennessee State Museum Presents “Hamilton: How the Musical Remixes American History”

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – December 10, 2019 – Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony Award-winning musical sensation, Hamilton, comes to the Tennessee Performing Arts Center (TPAC) December 31, 2019 - January 19, 2020. Coinciding with the musical’s run, the Tennessee State Museum will present a unique lecture event on Saturday, January 11, 2020 at 2:00 p.m., “Hamilton: How the Musical Remixes American History” with University of Maryland historian Dr. Richard Bell. In this talk, which has been presented to sold-out audiences at the Smithsonian, the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh and a dozens of other cultural institutions throughout the country, Dr. Bell explores this musical phenomenon to reveal what its success tells us about the marriage of history and show-business.

Aimed at adults who know the soundtrack or who’ve seen the show, Bell will examine what the musical gets right and gets wrong about Alexander Hamilton, the American Revolution, the birth of the United States and about why all that matters. He’ll examine some of the choices Hamilton’s creators made to simplify, dramatize, and humanize the complicated events and stories on which the show is based. He’ll also talk about Hamilton: The Musical’s cultural impact: what does its runaway success reveal about the stories we tell each other about who we are and about the nation we made?

Tickets for the event at the Museum’s Digital Learning Center are $30 and available through the Museum’s event calendar on its website at  http://tnmuseum.org.

About Dr. Richard Bell:

Richard Bell is a Professor of History at the University of Maryland. He holds a BA from the University of Cambridge and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He is the author of two books, We Shall Be No More: Suicide and Self-Government in the Newly United States (Harvard University Press), about suicide in America after the Revolution and Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home (37 Ink), about kidnapping and slavery in the early United States. Bell has won more than a dozen teaching awards, including the University System of Maryland Board of Regents
Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest honor for teaching faculty in the Maryland state system. He has held major research fellowships at Yale, Cambridge, and the Library of Congress and he is the recipient of the National Endowment of the Humanities Public Scholar award. He serves as a Trustee of the Maryland Historical Society, as an elected member of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and as a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Bell will be signing copies of Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home after the event.

About the Tennessee State Museum:

The Tennessee State Museum, on the corner of Rosa L. Parks Blvd. and Jefferson Street at Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park, is home to 13,000 years of Tennessee art and history. Through six permanent exhibitions titled Natural History, First Peoples, Forging a Nation, The Civil War and Reconstruction, Change and Challenge and Tennessee Transforms, the Museum takes visitors on a journey – through artifacts, films, interactive displays, events and educational programing – from the state’s geological beginnings to the present day. Additional temporary exhibitions explore significant periods and individuals in history, along with art and cultural movements. The Museum is free and open to the public Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., Thursdays from 10 a.m. – 8 p.m. and Sundays from 1 p.m. – 5 p.m. For more information on exhibitions and events, please visit tnmuseum.org.

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Joe Pagetta

Director of Communications

Direct: 615-741-5134

Mobile: 615-418-0058

Joseph.Pagetta@tn.gov