“The Salem witch trials are an example of a community at its absolute worst.” This is what Anna Danziger Halperin, associate director of the Center for Women’s History at the New-York Historical Society, answered when I asked her why she thinks they have remained a powerful part of the American imagination for well over 300 years. “It’s something that we look to as example of what not to do, and yet we keep repeating these mistakes.”
Danziger Halperin has been thinking a lot about the witch trials lately, as she is the coordinating curator of the New-York Historical Society’s new exhibition, The Salem Witch Trials: Reckoning and Reclaiming, which runs from 7 October through 22 January 2023. The show brings together a wide array of historical artifacts to help ground audiences in the history behind the witch trials, and it also intends to leave its own stamp on these events by drawing attention to oft-neglected issues of race and gender.
