FAQ

What is it?

The Wendy Shadwell Challenge is an exciting  Historic Richmond Town competition for eight to eighteen year olds.

How do I compete? 

E-mail  your thoughts (in 500 words or less) on how you can gain a better understanding of the American experience from the 17^th century to the present day through the collections and artifacts of Historic Richmond Town.

Which artifacts?

You can write about our historic homes, furniture, household or commercial items, artifacts found in our historical museum or research library and objects found in our online collection.  You may choose to explain how our interpretation helps your understanding.

How do I win?

Contest winners will be randomly selected from all valid entries four (4) times per year.  This is an ongoing challenge.  As long as it's posted here on the website, you may enter.

What is a valid entry?

Check out these simple rules:

You must be eight to eighteen years old.

Download the entry form and fill it in completely. Your essay will fit on the form.

When you've completed it click on the SUBMIT FORM button at the top of the form and it will be emailed to the contest entry  address: wendysgift@historicrichmondtown.org.

You can submit one entry per calendar year.

How will I be notified if I win?

Winners will be chosen within two (2) weeks of the close of each calendar quarter and will be notified via e-mail and/or via telephone.

What do I win?

Winners:

• Receive a one year complimentary Family Membership to Historic Richmond Town and the Staten Island Historical Society which includes:

• FREE regular admission to Historic Richmond Town (for two adults and children under 18 years of age living in the household)

• Exclusive invitations to members only events

• Reduced members’ fees for classes, workshops, and trips

• FREE subscription to calendars, newsletters, and The Staten Island Historian

• Receive a $50 gift certificate redeemable for one year at the Historic Richmond Town Museum Shop.

• Winners are featured on the Historic Richmond Town website.

What else do I need to know?

Here are a few things:

• Historic Richmond Town staff, board members and immediate family are not eligible.
• Winners agree to have their names and home communities (not their address, phone, or email) announced on Historic Richmond Town’s web site.  Winners may also have their photographs taken and included in this winners’ announcement.
• This contest is entirely free.  We encourage everyone to enter.
• Parents or guardians must give their consent.
• It's okay to get some adult help, but please make it your own work.

Who was Wendy anyway?

Wendy Shadwell was a person filled with curiousity and kindness.  She loved to dig into the past and discover all the gems of our collective history.  She was especially interested in the care and preservation of artifacts and objects. Her support of CPR - Conservation, Preservation & Restoration - makes it possible for those of us today to enjoy the past and learn from it.

Wendy at 5 years old near her house on an undeveloped Todt Hill.

Wendy was a passionate, giving person.  She got involved.  She used her time for volunteering.  She spent her financial resources on CPR.  She was always ready with a kind word of encouragement.  She is greatly missed.

Wendy's generous spirit lives in the Wendy Shadwell Challenge.  She is still encouraging us to be excited about all the good stuff we have at our fingertips.  These are wonderful things we can still explore thanks to people like Wendy.  For more than 20 years, Wendy was actively involved in supporting the work of the Staten Island Historical Society. She was particularly interested in the activities of the Curatorial Department, and served on the Society’s Collection Committee from its formation in 1983 until her passing.

Wendy Shadwell was also a valued member of the Society’s Board of Directors. Throughout her years with the Staten Island Historical Society, Miss Shadwell willingly shared her professional expertise, her fondness for Staten Island, and her love of history. Wendy was a friend, a mentor, and a generous supporter, and all of her colleagues at the Staten Island Historical Society are honored to have known her.

A native Staten Islander, Wendy Shadwell attended Mary Washington College of the University of Virginia in Fredericksburg, Virginia, from which she graduated in 1963 with honors in English and induction into Phi Beta Kappa. She then undertook graduate studies in art history at Columbia University.

In 1974, Wendy joined the staff of the New-York Historical Society in Manhattan as Curator of Prints, and she served in that capacity until her retirement in 2002. In her position, she oversaw the Society’s approximately three million holdings of prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and ephemera. Always looking to add to the collection, she greatly expanded the Society’s holdings. Among her important acquisitions were the architectural plans for Grand Central Terminal.

For Miss Shadwell it was important to reach out to the general public, and she organized and mounted numerous exhibitions from her department’s collections, including circus posters, 1939 World’s Fair objects, advertisements, and Civil War material. Through these wide and varied exhibits, New Yorkers could enjoy visually the cultural and social past of their city.

Wendy was acknowledged as an expert in the field of American prints and printmaking, and wrote and lectured extensively. She contributed to the works of other authors as well and wrote texts for many catalogues. She had a particular interest in ephemera, especially nineteenth-century trade cards and catalogues.  As an author, she was instrumental in bringing early American printmaking to the view of a wide audience with her book American Printmaking: The First 150 Years, published in 1969, which is a valuable reference for historians and collectors. Miss Shadwell also co-authored the two-volume Catalogue of American Portraits in the New-York Historical Society (1974).

An enthusiastic traveler, Wendy visited places as distant as Antarctica and New Zealand as well as Central America and across the United States.  She was an avid whale watcher and bird watcher and supporter of environmental causes.

Click on the button below to download your entry form: