Scarlett O'Hara was up early Thursday morning, greeting 172 5th graders from Bremen City Schools for a tour of the Marietta/Cobb Museum of Art.
O'Hara is portrayed by Jimmie Munn, who won a Scarlett lookalike contest six years ago in the Marietta Square. Today, she answers calls when groups like the museum need her to show up to put a face to Civil War lessons. She’s wearing a gown that complements her green eyes and looks like the dress Vivien Leigh wore to the barbecue at 12 Oaks.
Upstairs, Veronica Carey, a docent for the Root House Museum, is showing a smaller group of kids how a spinning wheel works.
“Did you see the pretty lady when you came in?” she asked. “She was wearing clothes you’d see before the war or in the early months. Later, women were dressed more like me.”
It’s the second-to-last day of the museum’s "Art, Artists and Artifacts of the Civil War" exhibit. Pieces, such as paintings, furniture, guns, bayonets and books were borrowed from people in the community as well as the Booth Western Art Museum. Just like today’s event, residents are chipping in to commemorate the area’s connection to the war, and when their effort helps kids learn in ways that jump away from textbook-style lessons, all the better.
“This kind of spinning wheel was invented 500 years ago,” Carey said while showing them how wool was turned to yarn. “But during the embargo, women couldn’t buy cloth or yarn, so they pulled their spinning wheels out of the attic.” She explains children their ages would have had jobs, too, including washing the wool in giant tubs on their front yards and helping their mothers gather natural materials to dye the fabrics.
A member of the museum’s board, Terri Cole, is leading another group through the upstairs gallery. She’s in period dress and showing them a painting by Thom Ross from the Booth collection that depicts General Lewis Armistead’s famous pose during Pickett’s Charge in Gettysburg.
“He put his hat on his sword and then he probably turned around and yelled, ‘C’mon, boys!’”
The students are rapt, asking questions and following behind her as she points out that some of the guns on display belong to her husband.
If there’s one thing the children will leave here with today, the museum’s Director of Education Emily Ryals hopes it’s an idea that art museums are more than just paintings on the wall.
“They get to see history in a different way here. Art has something for everyone and it can be applied to anything, especially to history.”
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