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BUCKHANNON – The Upshur County Historical Society’s 2026 Summer Exhibit highlights the artists who have lived in Upshur County, past and present.
Noel Tenney, director of special projects at the Upshur County Historical Society, said the History Center Museum plans a new exhibit each summer, each with a unique theme. This is the first one that focuses on art and artists.
“We like to do what are called storytelling exhibits. We’ve never done one just on the artists of Upshur County, past and present, and the teachers of art, so that’s what we strove to do this time. We have a growing collection of our own, and we have a few borrowed pieces, but most of what we have in the show belongs to the historical society and has been acquired over the years,” Tenney said. “We have an older collection here that dates back to the early 20th century.”
One of the oldest sections of the exhibit features work by Annie Latham Bartlett, a painter and sculptor who lived from 1865 to 1948.
“Annie Latham Bartlett was an interesting person. Her husband died, and she had a son and a daughter. The son was killed in World War 1, so she was by herself. She lived in that lovely home on Kanawha Street, right at the foot of the hill,” Tenney said. “She decided to go to school, and she went to Baltimore, to the Art Institute, and learned to do sculpture. Her key works were these little figurines that she did. She said she gathered the clay in the backyard, and they’re not fired very high, so they are quite fragile.”
The exhibit also features several paintings by Mary Higginbotham, who was born in Buckhannon in 1876 and lived to 1951.
“She’s primarily a painter, and she did all kinds of pieces. The one that we have hanging on this wall is a portrait of her mother that she did, and we have a lovely pastel portrait of her sister that hangs over the bookcase,” Tenney said. “She lived on Kanawha Street, where the current Episcopal Church is now. That was the Higginbotham property.”
There is a modern section of the exhibit, with a space designated to recognize Charlie Harper, who was born in 1922 and died in 2007.
“He is one of our most well-known artists nationally. He was born and raised here in Upshur County, and I think he was here until he went off to New York to the Art Institute, which is what everybody did at that time. And then he met a young lady who was from Cincinnati, so he ended up there, and then he got drafted,” Tenney said. “He became highly known for his work with the National Park Service, his work with Ford Times magazine, and there have been several books.”
The exhibit features plenty more artists and different kinds of art, including quilts, art on china plates, woodwork and more. There is also a section dedicated to art teachers in Upshur County.
“Our current AmeriCorps member, Marshall Heil, did most of the research and contacted people, and he wrote a lot of the text. It takes months,” Tenney said of the exhibit. “We’ve done a lot of ideas with the museum — if you name something, we probably did it. We’ve done the Civil War — twice, World War 2, World War 1. This is a whole new exhibit, and it will only stay up this year.”
The exhibit is viewable Sundays only, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., and will be open through September.
“We’re not only thinking about next year’s exhibit, but we also have our major journal project that comes out in the early spring, so that takes a lot of energy,” Tenney said. “We don’t have a fixed idea for the next exhibit, but we have over 30,000 catalog pieces of Upshur County memory. It might be anything from a painting, to a scrap of paper that tells you how to weave a piece of cloth, to 8,000 original photographs.”
The Historical Society Museum is located at 81 W. Main St. in Buckhannon. More information about the historical society can be found on their website.
