Artifactual Journey with Philip J. Merrill

Free; Registration Required

Cameron Art Museum hosts historian and consultant Philip J. Merrill for an Artifactual Journey of Black North Carolina, a presentation of specially curated NC artifacts followed by evaluations of select objects and artifacts from the community, and the opportunity to elect to have newly discovered artifacts published in Merrill’s forthcoming book Artifactual Journey of Black North Carolina (Blair, 2025).

Philip J. Merrill is an author, historian, consultant, and the Founder & CEO of Nanny Jack & Co, LLC, an African American heritage consulting firm with thousands of artifacts from 1700s to present day.  He served for eight seasons as a Chesapeake Collectibles appraiser on PBS Maryland Public Television (MPT) and for six seasons as an PBS Antiques Roadshow appraiser as the Black Americana specialist. In 2003, Towson State University named him a Distinguished Black Marylander.From 2006-2007, he was an Open Society Institute fellow, where he developed the “Know History, Know Self” program at Baltimore’s Booker T. Washington that used artifacts from his company’s archives to teach the students about their school, family, and community history.  In 2007, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Eastern Theological Seminary. In 2013, Merrill’s oral history was archived in the Library of Congress by the HistoryMakers for his accomplishments as an African American business and education leader. In 2022, he was an expert contributor for season 1 of the Discovery Channel show, Mysteries of the Abandoned: Hidden America and will appear in the upcoming third season. In 2023, Merrill was appointed to the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture by Maryland’s first Black governor, Wes Moore.

If you would like to have an artifact from your personal collection considered for historical evaluation by Philip at this event, please email a photo and a brief description of the item to [email protected]

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