News and Updates

Researching California’s Evangelical Community

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  Vantage Point historian Eric Abrahamson and research associate Lois Facer spent a week deep in a private archive in California this July. They were on the West Coast working on a project that explores the history of Evangelical Christian activism and philanthropy in California and its connections to faith-based community development and civil rights in […]

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Happy Birthday, Reptile Gardens!

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On Saturday, June 17, the iconic Black Hills tourist attraction Reptile Gardens celebrated its 80th birthday. Hundreds of current and former Reptile Gardens employees attended an afternoon-long party featuring proclamations by the Rapid City mayor, the governor of South Dakota, and the office of one of South Dakota’s U.S. Senators. Vantage Point historians Eric Abrahamson […]

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Deadwood Welcome Center Grand Opening

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Vantage Point historians Eric Zimmer and Eric Abrahamson attended the grand opening ceremony for the new Deadwood Welcome Center on Lower Main Street in Historic Downtown Deadwood. Working with the Deadwood Historic Preservation Department; Deadwood History, Inc.; and Split Rock Studios, Vantage Point helped develop the concept for the project, generated photographic and textual content […]

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Iowa Native Spaces

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On June 3, 2017, Vantage Point historian Eric Zimmer traveled to the Meskwaki Nation in central Iowa for a teacher workshop called “Iowa Native Spaces: Teaching Back to Erasures.” Zimmer presented alongside Meskwaki Settlement School teacher Leah Slick-Driscoll and Lance Foster, the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer of the Ioway Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska. Each presentation […]

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Walking with Coolidge

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Vantage Point historian Eric Zimmer teamed up with Rapid City Journal reporter  Seth Tupper for a joint lecture at the Journey Museum and Learning Center in Rapid City on Sunday, May 28, 2017. Tupper gave an overview of President Calvin Coolidge’s summer in the Black Hills in 1927, based on the research he performed for his new book: Calvin […]

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Harnessing Deadwood’s History to Welcome Visitors to Town

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Assisting the award-winning exhibit design and fabrication firm Split Rock Studios out of St. Paul, Minnesota, Vantage Point historians Eric Zimmer and Eric Abrahamson helped develop content for the new visitor’s center under construction on Lower Main Street in historic downtown Deadwood, South Dakota. The project required archival and photographic research at several regional archives, including […]

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Zimmer wins 2017 Rachel Carson Prize

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Vantage Point Senior Historian Eric Zimmer won the 2017 Rachel Carson Prize for Best Dissertation from the American Society of Environmental History for “Red Earth Nation: Environment and Sovereignty in Modern Meskwaki History” (University of Iowa, 2016). The selection committee described his work as such: “This year’s winner for the Rachel Carson Prize is Eric Steven […]

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Vantage Point Wins 2016 Excellence in Consulting Award

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In March 2016, Eric Abrahamson and Lois Facer traveled to Baltimore, Maryland, where they received the 2016 Excellence in Consulting Award from the National Council on Public History. They won the award for the six-book Rockefeller Centennial Series, which helped commemorate the 100th anniversary of the New York-based Rockefeller Foundation. In March 2016, Eric Abrahamson and […]

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Antitrust, Corporate Control and Philanthropy

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The story of the creation of the MasterCard Foundation is unique in the history of philanthropy. Founded as an independent, private foundation and endowed by MasterCard in conjunction with its initial public offering in 2006, the foundation’s assets (primarily MasterCard shares) have appreciated enormously over the last ten years. It now ranks among the world’s largest private […]