A Most Beguiling Accomplishment

I can't believe I've been working on this exhibition since the spring . Well, technically, I spent quite a few months in between researching a walking tour of Main Street - originally my brother agreed to make an ambitious app for it, which was then scaled back into a page on our website, and then recently I found that The Clio Foundation  is developing something to allow exactly the kind of tours I want to create, so that isn't available yet. The exhibition itself went up very smoothly. As you can see, it's not large - just one short stretch of wall next to and running up the side of our narrow ramp. To the right is the intro text: Imagine yourself back in Canton in the year 1900. Walking down the north side of Main Street from the Silas Wright House (at this time being used as a parsonage for the newly-rebuilt Universalist Church), you pass most of the same buildings that you know today with different occupants – the Remington Corner Clothing Store, Conkey’s ...

This past weekend was the first reenactment that I've actually been in charge of. (Some of you may pause to chuckle.) At last year's Civil War Weekend at Robert Moses State Park in Massena, I attended with the director of the museum as a kind of deputy - running errands that needed to be run, taking pictures so we would have something new to use in publicity next year, and so on. This year, it was all on my shoulders - the preparation leading up to the day, and the on-site work during the reenactment. This is a picture taken of me last year - I wore the same secondhand dress this time, but with all the new underthings I've made for the HSM, so you do not actually see each rung in the hoop, even when the wind blows. I also have a new bonnet: a straw Flora Francine form from Timely Tresses, trimmed with ribbon from Bulldog and Baum . New pictures ... someday, if someone else took a picture of me and I find it! It was definitely an experience . You really don't re...

This past month, my director was out on medical leave and I was technically acting director, if only in my mind. (To people walking through the door, I was still "probably the receptionist".) This led to my having to write down notes to remember to ask the director about when she came back, and the writing led to more ideas. Like ideas for exhibitions! Last month we also had a children's program on one-room schools, with a guest speaker who actually put the kids through their paces in writing and arithmetic. It was so popular! Making the past personal helps everyone connect to it. So what about an exhibition looking into the inhabitants of an ordinary street in a St. Lawrence County village? In order to tie this to Remington for the  Remington Arts Festival , the street I chose in 1900 housed both a paternal uncle's family and a maternal uncle's family. The census doesn't list street numbers, though! So I've been on a quest to both research about ten h...

A little while ago I reported to you that I'd posted thousands of Victorian and early 20th century photographs at the Chapman, where I was working. And they are lovely sources, especially since I gradually added more and more portraits, plus a batch of pattern envelopes from the 1900s and 1910s. Just try out the random image page ! But here is something even more exciting. Ready? Over the past couple of weeks, after doing all of the important photographs and some significant objects, like Civil War amputation kits, I convinced my supervisors that dresses would be a great addition to the website. There are some wedding dresses with good provenance, and others that have an owner attached but no event, and others with no provenance but I thought were great examples. But there really wasn't a good place to dress a mannequin and take a picture. So I devised a solution: I'd take a picture of just the bodice, lying flat, and then draw up a pattern, which would give much of t...

Sorry, this is taking the place of your usually-scheduled fashion plate. There is a new museum (partial) collection out there, available for your perusal! In the main, it consists of scans of photographs, especially ones of the Adirondacks taken by Seneca Ray Stoddard around the end of the 19th century, street scenes in Glens Falls, NY, and portraits of citizens of that town. Caroline Agnes Ranger, 1887; CHM 1996.58.23 And I know about it because my job for the past couple of months has been to clean up the files and get the database ready for uploading. It's been a wonderful change from office work, believe me. I've gotten to know a lot of Victorian Adirondack hotels, and done a ton of genealogical research for the people files. The benefit of having me do it is that whenever a photo is of interest to people looking for historical fashion details, it's been tagged with "Clothing & Dress" in the search terms. Check it out! I've made sure that ther...

At the moment my mild-mannered alter ego is a receptionist in a doctor's office, and we are required to show YNN Capital Region all day long.  Yes.  Much of the time it is ignorable, frequently it is appalling, and occasionally it tosses up something of interest. Today, that little gem was a spot on the Albany Institute of History and Art!  It was lovely to see the inside of the vault and the collections again, and it was especially nice to see Tammis Groft, the chief curator.  But part of the point of the spot was that they've created an online collections database , which is the sort of thing we all love to see.  Now I can link you directly to Ariantje Coeymans , one of my favorite portraits out there. "Ariantje Coeymans", Nehemiah Partridge, ca. 1720; AIHA 1938.5 You can also see whole categories of objects, such as (of course) Textiles, Costume, and Accessories .  The whole collection isn't represented, not by a long shot - but what's there...

Recently I've been applying to jobs, and getting emotional about how few of them there are and my chances &c., and then I was thinking I should go for a second, more generalized M.A. or possibly a PhD, and I've come across a decent number of links I wanted to share with those others in the same boat as me. How to Get A Museum Internship , from the Art History Blog: I have been lucky enough to be a volunteer, unpaid intern, paid intern, and full-fledged hired employee in a lot of different museums–from the very small and specific, to the medium-sized, to the encyclopedic and kinda famous. As I’ve now completely transitioned into supervising interns myself rather than being one, I thought it was high time I write a post about how to go about getting an internship in a museum. (I haven't had that many internships, but this does generally fit with my experience!) Should You Get A PhD to Work in a History Museum? by Steven Lubar: I talk to many students interested...

I go through a lot of records each day at my internship, and see a lot of descriptions of textile objects (since I'm into clothes, doilies, etc. at the moment), and see a lot of Wrong Things that quickly develop into pet peeves.  Some examples: "kimono sleeves" (used to mean "cut in one with body", not accurate); "flapper dress"; the construction "X in color"; "under-" attached to any piece of clothing that is already worn under clothes (underslip, underdrawers, etc.).  Some of these I can understand, but one thing that makes me stop and stare is the massive lace confusion.  Knitted lace will be labeled crocheted, crocheted will be labeled bobbin, bobbin will be labeled knitted.  So I thought, hey, why not make a post on laces?  (Other than because I'm preaching to the choir.) [NB: I'm missing a few pictures that I thought I took, so there are a few blank spaces.  I should have filled them in by Tuesday.]

Hello to everyone from Williamsburg!  My father, stepmother-to-be, and stepsister-to-be are visiting for the first part of this week, before we go on to Washington.  Yesterday afternoon I went to Margaret Hunter's millinery shop and met Samantha of Couture Courtesan , who is as lovely and nice in person as she seems online, and I am a huge, crazy fangirl. One of the first things I noticed when I got here was that the interpreters portraying a character, speaking lines in demonstrations or walking around decoratively - the actor-interpreters - tend to have fantastic clothes.  As I visited more and more sites, though, I noticed that the interpreters who are hired/volunteer to perform an informational or service function - the worker-interpreters - are pretty much always, if not always-always, dressed in bedgowns(/shortgowns, but I'm using bedgowns for convenience) and aprons, without stays, when they're women.  Not only was the difference noticeable to me, the ina...

I spoke about what I'm doing at my internship in general terms before, but I wanted to go into it with some specific examples. Lately, I've been going through a lot of medical supplies.  Three or four donations were made that consisted entirely of equipment, medications, etc. and fortunately just about everything in them was numbered.  Unfortunately: One donation doesn't have a list of items, just a gift agreement form that says, "1988.26.1-80: mostly medical equipment". One donation has some items labeled on the gift agreement, but with stretches of objects marked "unidentified medical tool". There are many boxes that are just full of stuff and took quite a while to go through.  On Tuesday I managed to get through roughly two shelves, when my usual rate is a whole shelving unit. I documented my process with one of the more tightly packed boxes to give you an idea of what I'm dealing with.   The box after I unpacked a small section of ...

I have now finished my first week at my new internship at the Chapman Historical Museum !  It is going so well.  (You can see some examples of their photograph collection here .) My job there is to catalogue the collections in PastPerfect while identifying objects that could potentially be deaccessioned or that need accession numbers.  I usually talk about fashion history research here, but I thought I'd go into more detail about this side of museum work.  And now I will answer the questions you probably don't have.