Laura Mary Bragg

Laura Mary Bragg (October 9, 1881 – May 16, 1978) was an American museum director who became the first woman to run a publicly funded art museum in America when she was named the director of the Charleston Museum in 1920. She later directed the Berkshire Museum in Massachusetts and advised on the reorganization of the Valentine Museum in Virginia. She is also known for developing a widely copied form of traveling museum exhibition for schools called a "Bragg Box."

Early life and education Laura Mary Bragg was born in Massachusetts on October 9, 1881, one of three children of Rev. Lyman Bragg and Sarah Jane (Klotz) Bragg.

After college, she worked as a librarian for one year on Orr's Island, Maine, where she introduced a children's nature program. Bragg then worked at the 115th Street Branch of the New York Public Library. She developed the museum's first educational programs and designed installations in the museum's new building. Bragg was named director of the Charleston Museum in 1920 after Paul Rea's retirement, becoming the first woman in America to run a publicly funded art museum.

In 1921, she opened the museum to Black visitors on Saturday afternoons, less than four years after the museum's own trustees had put in place a policy denying admission to Black people. Wooden boxes with hinged panels, they opened into "miniature stage sets" or dioramas on either local natural history (green-painted boxes) or cultural history (red-painted boxes).

Bragg was also a cofounder of the Poetry Society of South Carolina in 1920 along with DuBose Heyward, Josephine Pinckney, Hervey Allen and John Bennett.

Personal life

Bragg never married. She had many romantic friendships with women and several Boston marriages, notably with Hester Gaillard, Belle Heyward, and Helen Gardner McCormack, who became a protégé of Bragg's at the Charleston Museum. Virginia Military Institute cadet Li Rendao who often visited friends at The Citadel referred to Bragg as their "international mother." Bragg kept a scrapbook with newspaper clippings about the students, photographs of the club members at her home in Snug Harbor, graduation photographs, and commencement programs. She continued to correspond with students after graduation, keeping in contact until the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.