Dr. Alissa Whitmore of Perry has taken a position as research associate with the Fullhart Carnegie Trust, doing business as Hometown Heritage, in the Carnegie Library Museum.
Whitmore moved to Perry with her family in 1989 and graduated from Perry High School in 2002. She earned a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Iowa and has extensive research experience in Roman antiquities and also experience with excavations of Native American artefacts in Iowa.
“I have always loved history,” Whitmore said, “so I took classes in prehistory — which is just history before written records — the Greeks and Romans and archaeology. I have been fortunate to be part of excavations right here in Iowa as well as in Italy and the Netherlands.”
Whitmore’s graduate research included work in museums, archives and archaeological sites at Pompeii and Herculaneum in Italy. She said she also studied in Germany, Switzerland, England and Wales as part of her dissertation research.
“During and after grad school, I taught at the University of Iowa and Des Moines Area Community College before deciding that I wanted to pursue a career in museums,” she said. “I love museums for the same reasons that you do — the atmosphere of past places, the stories that objects and photos can tell and the desire to know who and what came before us.”
Whitmore gives tours of the Carnegie Library Museum and offers educational outreach to area students as part of her duties, but most of her time right now is given to managing the Hometown Heritage online archive of 15,000 photographs and working up the oral history recordings, which began in 2004.
The online database, called Pathways, was developed in collaboration with the College of Design at Iowa State University from donated and loaned materials from Perry-area residents. Whitmore said she is aiming to enlarge the photographs in the database and make the software’s search function return results that are fuller and more relevant.
“In the coming weeks at Hometown Heritage, I’ll be making some changes to our exhibits, revamping our online searchable photo collection and connecting with local schools to offer educational outreach to students,” she said. An event with an Iowa author of a book on Dallas County history is planned for later this summer, she said.
Whitmore can be found in the carnegie Library Museum Wednesdays through Fridays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. She also works part-time at the State Historical Museum in Des Moines, doing local archaeology in Iowa.
Whitmore succeeds Jared Bloom of Bouton, who served at the Hometown Heritage coordinator since July 2015. Bloom left the Perry position in order to visit family in New Zealand.
The Fullhart/Carnegie Charitable Trust, doing business as Hometown Heritage, is located in the Carnegie Library Museum at 1123 Willis Ave.
