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Lee celebrates its newest attraction: The Smithsonian Institution’s traveling exhibition opens a six-week run

Funding questions loom as the program expands to a multi-year effort.

Lee — With fanfare matching that of a local parade, the town welcomed the Smithsonian Institution’s “Museum on Main Street,” a traveling showcase for the iconic landmark, on June 7.

Located in the Lee Premium Outlets, the “Voices and Votes: Democracy in America” program examines the nearly 250-year history of democracy in America and is based on an exhibit housed in the Smithsonian, “American Democracy, A Great Leap of Faith.” The program is funded in partnership with the Mass Humanities organization, with such groups established in every state.

The Eagle Band entertains the audience at the June 7 Smithsonian Institute’s traveling exhibit celebration in Lee. Photo by Leslee Bassman.

Although her husband played in the Eagles Band entertaining the crowd, Pat Sadin of Washington, Mass., had another reason for attending the festivities held on the wet, chilly Saturday morning. “I just believe, especially in this day and age, in democracy and the real meaning of it,” she said.

The opening celebration featured local and state dignitaries and followed a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Lee Executive Assistant Sabrina Touhey, who belted out “The Star Spangled Banner” during the ceremony, was instrumental in bringing the program to the area after more than a year of planning.

Located in Suite B120, “Museum on Main Street” is open to the public until July 18, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. The exhibits are organized by theme and not in chronological order, allowing patrons to move through the program at will, said Mass Humanities Program Officer Marie Pellissier, who called the exhibit “amazing.”

“It’s really just a showcase for how important voting rights are,” said Lee Select Board Sean Regnier. He also expressed appreciation for his town being selected as a program host and offered information on local elections. “In my opinion, voting is really one of the most important rights that we have,” Regnier said. “It allows us to control the direction of government, how things develop, and it’s important for us to have these conversations.”

Lee was the second stop out of a seven-month, six-municipality tour within the Commonwealth for the outreach project designed to engage small-town communities in a local discussion. The tour began in April at the Mohawk Trail Regional School in Buckland and will travel to Ashby following its stint in Lee, then on to Douglas and Holbrook before ending in East Sandwich in January 2026. The last “Museum on Main Street” held in the Berkshires was in Sheffield.

Mass Humanities Executive Director Brian Boyles addresses Lee residents and visitors at the “Museum on Main Street” opening. Photo by Leslee Bassman.

Mass Humanities Executive Director Brian Boyles described the enormous undertaking by town employees and volunteers to pack and unpack the exhibit as “the biggest LEGO set you can imagine.” He announced that the kickoff event is part of a three-year engagement with Lee. For the work involved in putting up the program and training, the town received a $10,000 grant, and Boyles said a second grant will follow for additional programs. “I also want to make a promise from us to you that we are going to continue to work and listen to what you all feel is important about this democracy and about the humanities and about this state,” he said.

For Boyles, the Commonwealth’s small towns “have so much to tell us about the future of the state but also about where our democracy is heading.”

Dalton resident Senta Brodeur (left) chats with State Rep. Leigh Davis (D – 3rd Berkshire District) at the opening of the “Museum on Main Street” exhibition. Photo by Leslee Bassman.

State Rep. Leigh Davis (D – 3rd Berkshire District), who originally hails from Washington, D.C., recalled childhood visits to the Smithsonian museums in her hometown, being “drawn to the exhibits that told the story of our democracy”: Thomas Jefferson’s writing desk where the words of the Declaration of Independence were drafted; Abraham Lincoln’s inkstand used to pen the “Emancipation Proclamation”; Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s table, the birthplace of women’s rights; election campaign posters and the American flag based at Fort McHenry during the War of 1812. “And that’s exactly what this exhibit is about—the bold, messy, and still-unfolding experiment we call American democracy,” she said. “A revolutionary idea that power should come not from a king, but from the people. That a government should be, in Lincoln’s words, ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people.’ But we also know that idea has never been simple.”

The celebration wasn’t lost on recent news, the funding cuts that challenge the program’s future. “We depend on our partners in the state and our partners in the [federal] government to help us through what’s going to be a really difficult time,” Boyles said.

In April, Mass Humanities staff learned that $750,000 of its $1.3 million grants with its umbrella organization, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), was terminated by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), representing about a 35 percent slash in its annual revenue.

“We’re working hard to protect this program from what are unfair cuts,” Boyles said. He praised state and federal legislators for their support as well as the Massachusetts Cultural Council but cautioned that “nothing is going to easily replace the funding that was taken” and the five-decade relationship the state affiliate had with the NIH.

“We take that very seriously,” Boyles said. “We believe that we have a role in our democracy as Congress mandated it, to ensure that funding that happens at the federal level gets down to places like Lee. Without that link, that link being broken, you have to ask, ‘How can this be a government of the people?’”

Pellissier pushed for program supporters to reach out to their state and federal legislators to continue to advocate for the efforts of Mass Humanities and the Smithsonian, such as “Museum on Main Street,” and its partnerships that are “worth having and worth protecting.”

Davis said she has been in contact with her federal partners, relaying concern for recent slashes in state funding, “taking this grassroots advocacy and moving it up the chain.” “We cannot see further cuts to this, especially with the importance of Mass Humanities at this time in history,” she said. “It’s more important than ever to raise up the cultural significance of what’s happening.”

As part of this program, Town Administrator Christopher Brittain and the Lee PCB Advisory Committee are hosting a “community conversation”—”Collective Responsibility and Democratic Values: The Housatonic River Cleanup”—on June 10 at the exhibit site. The event is limited to 20 participants.

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