Laura Earls, a longtime museum professional and historian of early American gender and material culture, is the new director of the Read House & Gardens in New Castle.
Her main focus is telling the stories of the Read House and the people who lived and worked there, and she brings a diverse background to the role.
Earls was most recently a lead researcher and associate producer for an upcoming history podcast and has worked in collections management and interpretation at multiple Delaware institutions, including the Nemours Estate, Winterthur Museum, and the Delaware Historical Research Library.
Earls says that she hopes to balance the joyous parts of the Read House’s history while also getting visitors to think critically about its past issues of race and equity.
“While it’s very important that we focus on telling difficult stories in the Read House, it was also a place where people had fun,” said Earls. “I’ll be very interested to see how balancing those things comes to fruition here at the house.”
Earls has only been the director of Read House for roughly three months, but she’s already helped put together the one-night-only 'Read House Dozen' exhibit and has plans for a large revitalization of the garden, something she believes will promote inclusivity and Indigenous history.
“The garden project is also a really great space for us to interpret Indigenous histories,” said Earls. “I hope to integrate interpretation inside the house with what we’ve got in the gardens. So, it’s just one large story both inside and outside of the house.”
