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[Archived] Wanda S. Dowell, Director at Alexandria's Fort Ward Museum, named 1997 recipient of the James R. Short Award.
News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date:
Thursday, October 16, 1997
Contact:
The Office of Historic Alexandria, (703) 838-4554
Wanda S. Dowell, Director at Alexandria's Fort Ward Museum, named 1997 recipient of the James R. Short Award.
The Director of Alexandria's Fort Ward Museum Wanda S. Dowell, has been slated to receive the 1997 James R. Short Award in a special ceremony at the Southeastern Museums Conference's (SEMC) Annual Meeting on October 23 in Raleigh, NC. The Short Award is presented by the Southeastern Museums Conference to recognize "a lifetime of distinguished service to the museum profession." The award includes a $500 honorarium and a permanent memento.
Wanda Dowell has been a part of the entire development and growth of Fort Ward and its historic collections from its inception. She began her 33-year career as a museum assistant at Fort Ward, joining the staff just one year after the Museum and historic Fort opened to the public in 1964. Fort Ward is the best preserved of the few remaining Union forts in the Civil War Defenses of Washington. The City of Alexandria excavated and restored part of the Fort as a Civil War Centennial project, and established the Museum as an interpretive center for the site and the time period in general. By the early 1970s, Fort Ward began to achieve recognition for its significant Civil War collection and historic property. The Museum collection has now grown to more than 2,000 objects, which includes objects related to Alexandria's wartime history, as well as library holdings that comprise a large body of reference materials on the Defenses of Washington.
Since becoming Director in 1979, Ms. Dowell has been responsible for steering the Museum and Fort toward higher professional accomplishments. Under her guidance, the Museum adopted professional procedures for accessioning, cataloguing, storing and conserving the collections which made it, in the words of the 1987 American Association of Museums (AAM) review panel, "...a focused, well-managed institution that is a model in professional standards for the small museum." Thanks largely to her grant-writing skills, Fort Ward received almost 20 Federal grants since 1980. These grants were applied to upgrading collections management and conservation. Fort Ward was accredited by the American Association of Museums in 1987, and has received two National Awards of Merit from the American Association for State and Local History.
In 1985, Ms. Dowell wrote the Fort's first preservation and maintenance plan which established guidelines for systematically caring for the historic site through erosion control, landscaping and general maintenance procedures. This plan set a standard in historic earthwork preservation and has been used by other state and national historic sites.
Ms. Dowell has literally put Alexandria's Civil War experience on the map. In 1988, she spearheaded efforts to erect interpretive markers at the sites of all the Civil War forts in the Defenses of Alexandria. This project linked Alexandria's sector of forts with those already marked by Arlington County. She has worked with several state and regional agencies to promote Alexandria and Northern Virginia as a Civil War destination for tourists. Since 1995, she has served as the Northern Virginia regional coordinator for the state-wide ISTEA "Civil War Trails" project. In this role, she has coordinated plans to highlight notable Civil War sites in Northern Virginia on an informative brochure/map called "Virginia Civil War Trails." She also participated in a collaborative effort between Alexandria, Arlington and Fairfax County in the publication of a brochure/map, Guide to Civil War Sites in Northern Virginia: Where The Civil War Began.
Ms. Dowell's importance to Alexandria history is summed up by Office of Historic Alexandria Director, Jean Taylor Federico: "...Those of us who know her feel that her extensive knowledge and boundless enthusiasm for her work have made her one of our city's most valuable resources."
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