‘Her legacy is all over this museum’

More than a decade after graduating from Moravian, Martin Felton went on to become one of the founders of the Anacostia Community Museum in Washington. She worked at the museum, part of the Smithsonian Institution, from 1967 to ’94.

While Melanie Adams, director of the Anacostia Community Museum, didn’t work with Martin Felton, she said “her legacy is all over this museum.”

“And similar to its founder, John Kinard, she was a community activist in the sense that she was working in the community to improve the conditions for people living east of the river,” Adams said. “It’s not only telling them about the issues, but then, How can we work together as a community and solve them? So, I think she really saw the museum as a place of education, which anyone you talk to about her, they’ll tell you, that’s what she emphasized — education.”

For an exhibit called “Rat: Man’s Invited Affliction,” Martin Felton brought rats to live in the museum to teach how to manage the community’s excessive rat population. In “Lorton Reformatory: Beyond Time,” she provided a platform for incarcerated men to tell their stories through song and drama.

“The reason why that was innovative, not only because there were live rats, but more because it was really one of the first times especially within the Smithsonian where the museum was relevant to its community,” Adams said. “She was able to look and figure out what the community needs.”

She also created in the early to mid-1970s the museum’s Youth Council, working with teens and young adults in the area and taking them on trips outside the U.S.

“Just because you live in Anacostia doesn’t mean you can’t learn about the world,” Adams said. “So she was very intentional in nature in terms of exposing neighborhood kids to the world beyond Anacostia. And I think she was doing it the way it still made them proud to be from Anacostia.”

But Martin Felton’s impact wasn’t only felt at the Anacostia Museum and the surrounding community, Adams said. Her work influenced museums all over.

“You can’t talk about [the Anacostia Community Museum] without talking about that rat exhibit — that’s what everyone knows,” she said. “And so I think she has a legacy in museum education in general, in terms of being innovative and being relevant. I think she’s the one who’s really brought that to the forefront by coming to ACM and doing the programs and working with the community.

“So as a community-based museum, she was figuring it out as she was going along, and it’s really become a model for the field,” she said.