William F. Brooks, Jr. Endowed Fund for History and Art Education

In honor of the retirement of the Henry Sheldon Museum’s former Executive Director, William F. Brooks, Jr. in 2021, an endowed fund was established in his name to support education staff and programs focused on history and art. The draw, but not the principal, will fund guest speakers, field trips, and other activities that will enhance the Sheldon’s exhibits and other educational programs. This Fund will also support Museum staff developing and implementing educational programs for students, with a particular focus on serving pre-schools, elementary schools, and middle schools.

A statement from former Executive Director, Bill Brooks:

“Education, especially of history and the arts, has been central to me and my Brooks, Waterman, Ross, and Holmes relatives. My maternal Vermont grandparents Jacob Johnson Ross, M.D., and Hannah Elizabeth Holmes Ross met at UVM, and both later held various teaching positions in Vermont. Most of their children, including my mother Katherine Ross Brooks, and many of their grandchildren and great grandchildren enjoyed careers as teachers. 

My paternal Massachusetts grandparents supported local education. As Mayor of Cambridge, William F. Brooks invited MIT to relocate from Boston to Cambridge in 1911, and his wife, Jesse Waterman Brooks, was elected head of the Cambridge School Committee, on which their son, my father, also served before relocating to Washington, D.C. after WWII.  He was active and later President of the Harvard Club of Washington, D.C.

Summers were spent at the family camp at Long Point, North Ferrisburgh, VT where I visited the Shelburne Museum and the Sheldon Museum.  In Washington, D.C., I was a frequent visitor to the National Gallery of Art, the Phillips Collection and the Corcoran Gallery of Art.  College summers were spent as a research intern at the Office of Emergency Planning and the National Archives.  Art research projects at St. Albans led me to study and visit the “Grief” cast bronze sculpture located in the Rock Creek Cemetery by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, commissioned by Henry Adams in memory of his wife Marian "Clover" Adams.

Later while at Kenyon, I studied the “Titanic” granite sculpture to honor those who gave their lives by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, then located on the banks of the Potomac where the Kennedy Center would be built.

While a banker on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, I hosted a fundraiser for the local arts council at my Wicomico River waterfront home to benefit the Helen Brent Scholarship Fund and began my introduction to American Folk Art that led me to New York University to earn a master’s degree in American Folk Art Studies and thereafter to accept positions at Frog Hollow the Vermont State Craft Centers, the Calvin Coolidge Foundation, and the Sheldon Museum, all offering history and arts education.

Especially at the Sheldon, we regularly hosted children and adult art/history exhibits, programs, lectures, and tours.  My hope is that by establishing the William F. Brooks, Jr. Endowed Fund for History and Art Education, the annual interest will be used to help fund museum education staff and the continuation of public education presentations.

I invite you to join in the effort.  I thank you for your friendship, support, and belief in the power of art and history.”