Supplies!

The museum recently got a shipment of supplies! Okay, maybe this isn't really that exciting to most people, but I am the kind of person who checks the mail as soon as it comes and still gets excited by a package in the mail. So imagine my delight when my most recent supply orders started arriving in great big boxes like this:


Inside, were all kinds of goodies. I got a whole bunch of 2" ethafoam planks, which are great for carving out custom cavities to hold an object very securely. I did this with many of the bone and ivory pieces we have from Alaska.


And a bunch of foam rod which is possibly the most whimsical looking of the museum supplies we have on hand. There's about 100' of it in this picture. It's great for making pot rings (.pdf) (although I've been hot gluing the foam instead of trying out NMAI's "hot dog" method) and has many other potential uses as well.


And last but not least is the sticky subject of adhesives (get it?! Sticky adhesives! I crack me up.). Adhesives in a museum setting are problematic though - a truly archival adhesive (one which will not break down over time) may never exist, but adhesives have their place and are very, very useful. Last time I ordered super long glue sticks, but this time around we're going to try their shorter counterparts. That roll in front is double stick tape which has a myriad of uses. The museum clamping devices (cough *clothes pins* cough) in the background are not from any of the most recent packages - they are from the local drug store; they're used to keep 2 pieces of glued material from pulling apart. Simple, but it works!


The packages included a few other things, but I'm excited to have the foam rod (which we didn't have earlier) and to get some more glue sticks (which we were very nearly out of) and some double stick tape (which we were out of). It's good to get supplies.

These boots were made for walking....

but now they're in a museum so no one is allowed to use them for walking, running, dancing, or even hanging out on the couch watching tv. And they're not boots, really, they're moccasins.

Over the past couple weeks I spent some time rehousing the moccasin collection. We have 17.5 pairs of moccasins, ranging from so tiny that they must be for a doll to mens sizes, and 1 pair of child's mukluks. Some of them were pretty much flat after being in storage for years (you know how a light canvas sneaker flops over? It's kind of like that. Shoes don't always hold their shape.), while others had some paper stuffing which gave them some support.

None had storage which allowed easy lifting while minimizing physical contact. So, taking a page from the Minnestoa Historical Society (which has really excellent information on their website, by the way), I set out to make custom supports for the moccasins, both internal and external.

I started with the moccasins, like this one. It had no internal support, although the large amount of beading held the shape of the foot fairly effectively.


Then I looked at what I had on hand: Cotton stockinette fabric, polyester quilt batting, scissors, and a sewing kit. The scissors, by the way, are distressingly dull. Must remember to sharpen those sometime.


For my first try, I made a rectangular pillow:


Okay, so it was approximately rectangular. I'm a collections manager, not a seamstress. But look how nicely it supports the back of the moccasin:


But, it occurred to me, feet are not rectangular. So the rest of the moccasin support inserts were made to be roughly foot shaped. Again, I emphasize roughly.


And check out the sole of the shoe above. Looks like it was recycled from a parfleche, or some other similarly decorated object.

And finally, after sewing 33 supports, all the moccasins were supported. I endeavored to recreate the external support which the MHS had utilized, and, ultimately, I think it worked out pretty well. Ours are made of acid free card board with a tissue paper layer on which the moccasins sit (because the cardboard is buffered and the tissue paper is not).






The freshly housed moccasins were returned to their wooden drawers where they will patiently await the move to a new facility.


Ultimately, this kind of storage will reduce the need for handling the moccasins which will help preserve them for a longer time. Feels like a happy ending to me!

Bloggy Recommendations

Do you like reading this blog? Wanna find some more museum-y type blogs to read? Here's are three that I'm really digging right now:

Curator's Corner. From the Wm. McKinley Presidential Library & Museum written by Curator Kim Kenney. Very chatty and a great look into the variety of projects Ms. Kenney is involved in.

The Bowers Museum Collection Blog. Profiles one object each week with really excellent information and great photos. Very interesting stuff.

Smithsonian's Office of Exhibits Central. A really remarkable look behind the scenes of how exhibits are built. Posting can be erratic, but worth adding to your feed reader when they do post.

There are loads and loads of us museum bloggers out there now. Do you read more than one museum blog? What makes a good one? Do museum blogs make you think differently about the institutions who blog?

Happy April Fool's Day!

April Fool's Day is a good a reason to post as any. No shenanigans will ensue, I promise. (although, check out this post from the Science Museum of Minnesota's Science Buzz Blog.)

Back in the day I would post three times a week, but now we're headed toward almost 2 weeks without a new post. I've got one in the works about the latest rehousing project I've taken on. Beaded moccasins. I won't say much about it, but I will say that I have spent much of the last week poking my poor fingers with sewing needles and pins (accidently, of course).

This quarter is going to be very very busy, I think. There are 7 (seven!!) students working with me this quarter. I foresee a great deal being accomplished.

(Why is it that blogger seems to remove the spaces between my sentences? Is it Firefox? Because I promise I'm spacing twice between each sentence and am not trying to confuse your eyes.)

Progress Report

This week is Spring Break for Central Washington University. That means that it is extremely quiet in the building, which normal bustles with undergraduates during daytime hours. The quiet has given me a chance to take stock of progress. But first, a progress shot of our future museum home:



The Dean Hall renovation is progressing! The bottom floor walls have been moved out - I can see framing for them around - and the front of the building is being added on to. Dean Hall will house more than the museum; it will also be home to the Dean of the College of the Sciences, the Geography Department, the Anthropology Department, and several large classrooms. But it's exciting to see progress being made.

Progress is being made inside the museum as well. I had three hard working interns helping me this quarter. They worked on a variety of tasks including cataloging, rehousing, photographing, and updating the PastPerfect records for nearly 250 of our collections objects. Receiving special attention was our collection of West African material, including many pieces of jewelry, our collection of spears, arrows, and bows, and our collection of Southwest Pottery. I cannot thank these interns enough for their hard work, and am grateful that two will be returning for the Spring Quarter.




In addition, Anthropology 362: Curation and Collections Management researched our small collection of Navajo weavings and rehoused them. Previously, these textiles had been half-rolled, half-folded, but now they are rolled and hung on our impromptu textile storage rack.


So we've made some really excellent progress this quarter, and I think we're going to make some really excellent progress next quarter. We've come a long way, but there's a great deal more work to be done.

Rock on!

Okay, okay, I have this affinity for puns in the titles of post. This post is about agates. The collection here in the Anthro Department contains a collection of about 400 polished agates. I will be the first to admit that I know very little about agates, but these are very pretty objects. There are about 14 Riker cases of these agates, none of which have yet been entered into our PastPerfect database. (Side note, unrelated: I had hoped there would be a wikipedia article on Riker cases, but if there was, it was buried under articles relating to Riker, William T (from Star Trek: The Next Generation, if you missed its 7 year run and subsequent syndication), alas.)

The agates below are selections from the very first Riker case I examined.


An Ellensburg blue agate. Apparently, this kind of agate is found almost exclusively in the local area (Kittitas Valley).


A sagenite agate is a type which has particular kinds of inclusions. Personally, I really like this piece for no other reason than it's pretty. ;)


A carnelian (meaning it has reddish hues) thunderegg agate. Thundereggs form inside of rhyolitic lava flows. That's a drama filled birth, for sure.

I've only worked through the first Riker case of these agates, but a glance ahead shows more polished agates, some shaped into hearts and diamonds. It should be interesting to learn more.

Real and Fake

One thing that many museums deal with is the issue of reproductions in the collection.

For example: Yesterday I was going over an accession list for one of our collections (the list that was made of everything when it came into the museum). One of the items on the list was a bust by Desiderio da Settignano. I was skeptical. I doubted that we had a marble bust from an Italian Renaissance sculptor in the collection. But it's possible. Our collection, while small, is very diverse.

I hadn't encountered the object before, so I went to check on it. As I lifted it out of the back corner of the shelf it was on, I knew that it wasn't an original (it was far too light to be marble, and the inside was hollow); it was a plaster reproduction of A Little Boy.



Interestingly, none of the written documentation had indicated that this object was a reproduction. It was also mis-identified as a bust of the infant Christ. But a few minutes using google identified the original as residing in the National Gallery, and not being of an infant Christ, but an anonymous boy.

Now it's properly identified, and we have an issue in front of us: what do we do with this reproduction? It's not the real object, so it doesn't have the same intrinsic value (and I'm not referring to monetary value - the same would be true of a reproduction of a military uniform, or of a cereal box, for that matter) that the original would have. So do we keep it? If we don't keep it, what do we do with it?

I have my thoughts on this matter, but I'm going to keep them to myself. What do you think? How should museums handle reproductions (fakes) in their collections?