NEWS

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March 23, 2019

When Collections Attack

By Anna Cueto If you ever have a chance to ask a curator what they think is the most important tool of the trade, they’ll likely tell you that it’s a simple pair of gloves – at least, I know I would. For people working with museum collections, latex or nitrile gloves are worth their weight in gold.  You see, despite movies and television showing how sedate museums are behind the scenes, some days curators feel more like Indiana Jones than Marian Paroo – and here is why. A lot of the danger to be encountered in museum storage comes from previous generations using chemicals that were not known to be poisonous until recently. One of most obvious sources of old hazardous chemicals are old pharmacy bottles. While we know better today, previous generations doused ailments with everything from sulfuric acid to mercury to opium, and these chemicals can leave hazardous residues or fumes behind. It’s safest to wear protective gloves and a mask before handling old pharmacy materials. And while I shouldn’t have to say this, certainly never ingest or apply old medications. Historically, the pharmaceutical trade was not very well regulated, and this meant that you never quite […]
August 23, 2018

A Servant’s Life in the News!

Have you been out to see our new exhibit yet? Check out the great coverage from WDVM and then come out to see it for yourself! A Servant’s Life Exhibit – WDVM
August 2, 2018

A Servant’s Life – Exhibit Update

It has recently come to our attention that some of our local community members have raised concerns about the content of our upcoming exhibit, ‘A Servant’s Life,’ and we wanted to reach out to ensure that those concerns are addressed prior to the opening of the exhibit. In a recent teaser article for the exhibit, some details of the duties were listed to give readers an idea of the activities and displays they will encounter during a tour. As is often the case with the monthly column, we run into a word limit, and attempt to make the content of the article and its prose as approachable as possible, so that even those with a limited understanding of the topic find it engaging. It is for this reason that we chose to exclude in-depth detail on the specific servants that worked in the household during the 1800s and 1900s. We know from records that the families living in the Miller House from 1825 to 1966 used exclusively African American staff for service purposes, and that the Price family owned slaves, as well as employing free black people during the 20 years they lived in the home. The home’s history of […]
June 13, 2018

Women fight for their rights – and their fashions?

I’ve been thinking a lot about ladies recently. Besides being an absolutely delightful one myself, I spend a lot of time around powerful, accomplished, intelligent women who work hard every day to make life better for those around them. On a much larger scale, it is impossible to deny that American women are once again in the spotlight, receiving national attention as we define women’s rights, roles, and personal agency moving into the 21st century. American women were doing much the same 100 years ago as the world moved into the 20th century. Questions about women’s rights, roles, and personal agency needed to be answered for a rapidly changing world. The answers to those questions revealed themselves in a variety of ways – in the passage of the 18th and 20th Amendments, which started Prohibition and granted women the right to vote, respectively, and in the swift and major changes in women’s apparel from the 1890s to the 1920s. While changes in fashion might seem frivolous next to major political change, women’s clothing and activities have always closely reflected that society’s attitudes towards women. Women’s leisure clothing saw the largest innovations and changes as women gained more agency within American […]