Lee — The Smithsonian Institution, through a state organization, has boots on the ground in Lee, planning with local officials to bring its program “Voices and Votes: Democracy in America” to the town this summer.
The event is part of the renowned research facility’s “Museum on Main Street” traveling exhibition and will open June 7 in a storefront at the Lee Premium Outlets. Through games, photos, videos, souvenirs, and memorabilia, the program examines the nearly 250-year-old history of democracy in America and is based on an exhibit housed in the Smithsonian, “American Democracy, A Great Leap of Faith.” The family-friendly program will close July 19.
Last week, Lee Town Administrator Christopher Brittain and Executive Assistant Sabrina Touhey sat down with Mass Humanities Program Officer Marie Pelliissier to discuss more details on the project that has been in the works for about a year. Mass Humanities, a nonprofit, private state partner for the National Endowment for the Humanities, serves as the state’s coordinator for the program and is responsible for bringing Smithsonian Museum exhibits to small towns.
“What the Smithsonian does is the curators who make the big exhibits in [Washington, D.C.] work with the team in the traveling exhibition office to shrink those 3,000-square-foot exhibits down to 700 square feet, pack them up into boxes, put them on trucks, and send them around the country,” Pellissier said.
Among other displays, Lee residents can expect to participate in the exhibit’s four different interactive activities, including “Head-to-Head” that Pellissier describes as “a March Madness-style bracket designed to get people talking and debating about entries into civil conversation and dialogue.” One game includes “which food is more American,” engaging players in a heated debate over hot dogs and corn on the cob while another game features participants arguing over naming the most important figure in American history, she said.
Although Lee is the only town in Berkshire County selected by Mass Humanities last August, the exhibit is visiting five other Massachusetts communities beginning April 17 in Buckland, followed by Ashby, Douglas, Holbrook, and ending in East Sandwich in January 2026.
“One thing that stood out in Lee is the community enthusiasm,” Pellissier said of the town’s selection. “It was jumping off the page in the application.”
Lee’s central location just off the Massachusetts Turnpike pushed the community ahead as a host, she said. Even with the exhibits positioned at the Outlets, additional festivities are planned for Main Street, connecting the town’s history with the program’s theme. “There’s a lot of opportunity to get downtown businesses and folks passing through Lee engaged with the exhibit in lots of different ways,” Pellissier said.
The project is a big deal, with host towns positioned to be noticed by travelers.
In 2023, the town of Sheffield hosted a different Smithsonian traveling exhibit, drawing 23,000 visitors, with half of those visitors new to the town, Touhey said.
“It’s a win-win for the town of Lee because we not only get the exhibit here but it’s also bringing people into downtown Lee and to the Outlets,” Brittain said. “It should be good for business, it should be good for tourism, and it’s great for the residents of Lee as well. They get to have an opportunity like this, to have a Smithsonian exhibit in our town to see.”
As an exhibit host, Lee received a $10,000 grant from Mass Humanities to develop local programming in conjunction with the program and deal with the logistics of the project.
“I feel like a lot of people come to the Berkshires in the summer and a lot of it’s for Tanglewood or Jacob’s Pillow or there’s a lot of stuff happening in the nearby towns,” Touhey said. “So, it’s nice, as the Gateway to the Berkshires, to have a big event happening here too that people can come and join, that they may not have even planned to have as a part of their itinerary for their vacations. It brings a little more focus to Lee in the summer, too, which I feel like Lee doesn’t get, necessarily, as much of all the time.”
Since early fall, training workshops with the host communities have featured discussions on ensuring that the local programs are accessible, building strong partnerships through the project and designing a “Community Conversation” about a topic of importance in each town. For Lee, that conversation will focus on the Housatonic Rest of River remediation plan, with a facilitator and a group of individuals who harbor different viewpoints on the topic.
“When we were training, our big discussion was the cleanup of the Housatonic [River] because there’s so many people who have no clue and there’s so many people who know so much,” Touhey said.
Local programming will also feature the Lee Chamber of Commerce, Historical Commission, Youth Commission, and Public Library, as well as downtown restaurants and businesses, she said.
“Mass Humanities is so thrilled to be working with Lee, with Sabrina [Touhey] and Chris [Brittain], on this,” Pellissier said. “It really is an honor for us to be able to have this three-way partnership.”
