(Ticonderoga NY) Fort Ticonderoga’s Curator Matthew Keagle will be presenting at a conference today, hosted by the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and of Military History in Brussels, Belgium. The conference, “From Battlefield to Drawing Room: Textile and (Military) Fashion around 1815,” coincides with the bicentennial of the battle of Waterloo. It will bring together curators, conservators, scholars, and researchers from major military museums, universities, and art museums across Europe.
Matthew Keagle will be the only North American presenter. His paper, entitled “Echoes of Independence? American Military Dress from the War of Independence to the War of 1812,” will address the evolution of military uniforms in the United States, and their significance to the development of American society in the critical period of the nation’s birth. To help illustrate this, examples of uniforms from Fort Ticonderoga’s extensive collection of Revolutionary and Federal era clothing will highlight not only the diversity of American military dress, but the strength of Fort Ticonderoga’s collections.
“Not only is this a chance to share research and ideas, it is an opportunity to put Fort Ticonderoga back into an international conversation. When the museum was founded in the early 20th century, the directors and curators corresponded with their colleagues in Europe; we hope to continue that dialogue across the Atlantic into the second century of the museum’s existence.”
Fort Ticonderoga holds one of North America’s premier collections of 18th-century military material culture. The exhibits contain thousands of objects and tell thousands of stories, narrating the history of Fort Ticonderoga from the military culture of the 18th century to the reconstruction of the fort in the 20th century.