I’ve worked in History and museums for the better part of 20 years …
So, it was natural my cousin sent someone to me when they found something odd while removing an old chimney in an old house in Nebraska. “What is it?” they asked. It was a little card with some words and letters and numbers printed on it. The longer I looked, the less sense it made. I had no idea. In fact, it’s been a few years since they asked, and I still have no idea.
Running across this photo again I’d kept for reference, I got back in touch with the finder and asked if he had any answers — Still no.
I’d lost any details I’d had, so he kindly sent me more info: The card is 2″ wide, 3.5″ tall and totally blank on the back. Much smaller than I assumed it would be.
With an ornamental border it reads:
a 10 G. Robbins Miss Harrison, J. F. Hull Gracie Battis M
So, I’ve had a drastic move in my day job: It’s been about a year since moving to California for a dream job: I’m now the curator of the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center. Yes, that makes me the official historian of Snoopy, Charlie Brown and the whole Peanuts Gang. It’s been fantastic, but it’s been hectic in my first year here and it’s not left any time at all for much creative writing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m writing constantly … for work. We have six exhibitions per year, and I write all of them, and there have been special projects that were waiting as well, so it’s been crazy but the end is in sight.
We’ve also been busy as a family getting to know our incredible new home. Sonoma County and the Bay Area, in general, is just a very special, beautiful place, and as people who love the outdoors, it’s easy to put the notebooks aside for the weekend and just go. The beach, the mountains, the Redwoods, several hundred wineries, world-class dairies with their specialty cheese shops — it’s a lot to take in for a family of midwesterners who are used to holing up for the winter and not seeing true warmth and daylight until May.
Also, (back to work), I’ve had a lot of reading to do. Like how to do you become an “overnight” expert on a man who has had a handful of biographies, has given hundreds of interviews, and wrote and drew a daily comic strip for nearly 50 years (to the tune of 17,897 strips!) — A lot of reading. A lot, lot of reading. And to read his influences. And his acolytes. And I’m not done, by a long shot, but I think I’m starting to see the margins of life reforming where I can slip in a creative word or two outside my journal.
I’m a blockhead
In the past year, I’ve been learning a lot about comics and how they fit into pop culture in the 20th Century and coming forward to now. So, in an effort to keep my bona fides current, and to be a good creative person, I’m showing my work (#showyourwork) as a sort of disciple of Peanuts fan Austin Kleon has taught in his wonderful books which really kicks off with Steal Like an Artist, his follow up Show Your Work, and the just-released Keep Going.
Learning how to date things is both science and art. Of course, I don’t mean engaging in a romantic experience with the objects, but telling how old a thing is.
Like you’ve probably heard about bank tellers, who are trained to spot counterfeit currency by handling a lot of real currency, the same is true for museum and archive professionals. We learn to recognize things for what they are by handling a lot of similar stuff. Well seasoned collectors are the same. Being able to observe characteristics of an object allows us to learn more than is on the surface.
Curators track not only the history of the artifacts they care for in the way the object was used, but also how it is used after it enters a museum’s collections, like if it was studied for a publication, or if it appeared in an exhibit somewhere. This includes keeping an archive of related materials, like news clippings from exhibits. I recently received a news clipping from an exhibit, but there was no date on the clipping, from the newspaper or otherwise (a handwritten date is also great if it’s done). So, I wanted the clipping, but when did it come out?
Clues
On the front of the article, the gentleman on the left (not in the painting) looked all too familiar. No, he’s not me, but he could have been at one time. I remember the mid-1990s well, and that’s exactly how I dressed and most young men dressed at the time. But, what year, exactly? I can’t really tell from the photo if it’s 1993 or 1998. I know the exhibit and museum are in Nebraska (I am too), so I know wearing a flannel shirt and jeans really isn’t a good indicator of the season, so I’m can’t be sure of the month just from this photo. So, on the front of the article, the part I want, there’s not much to tell me the exact date of the article beyond it’s from the mid-1990s. Probably.
Flipping the clipping over, there are a few other bits that may be helpful, but best of all, there’s a movie schedule!
Today, many of these Omaha theaters are now gone, or if they still exist have been bought out. They also probably don’t have records on hand for when they showed which movies. Luckily for us, we have IMDB. I recognized some of these movies but didn’t remember exactly when they came out. (Who could forget Beverly Hills Ninja? Just me? Ok.) Fortunately, there were enough films here to hone in on a date where movies on the way out, and movies that had just debuted overlap. Charting it, we’ve got it down to the last two weeks in January 1997. That’s a pretty narrow window, and frankly good enough for documenting this article for my files.
To get the date even closer I could go through microfilm/digitized copies from those weeks and find the article, but that would take time I just can’t devote when January 1997 is good enough.
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Curatorial Pipe Dreams
Admittedly, I lucked out on this clipping. I’ve got many others in our archives that just don’t have much to go on at all. In fact, it’s so obscure I can only hope one day someone develops the technology where I can run an image recognition of the scanned clipping and it’ll find the correct article within the digitized newspaper somewhere online. Wouldn’t that me amazing? Maybe someday.
About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes historical mysteries and works as a history museum curator.
What I love about working in museums is that there’s actually a lot of variety in the work. So, what can a ‘typical’ week as a museum curator look like? Meetings, duh, but let’s skip them. Lots of research as well this week. We get a few research requests every day. Some are easy, some are not so easy, and some we need to use a lot of creativity to get an answer. I also did some fun stuff, of course.
Back Into the Recording Studio
I read and recorded scripts for more history videos since our last ones have been a big hit. If you’d like to check those out, they are now live on Vimeo:
A replica medieval Irish reliquary was given to my organization’s founder during his visit to his native Ireland in 1947: https://vimeo.com/181851600
Poking around the dark corners of our recording studio, I found this gem. If your sound engineer is good enough to have worked at Opryland, they’re good enough for me:
More filming
The videos have been a big hit among administration, so we’re doing more! Here, one of our staff photographers is getting the goods on a crowd favorite artifact.
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Anything but typical.
These are just a couple things I did this week that wasn’t looking through folders filled with papers and staring at my scanner waiting for it to decide to cooperate. And I wouldn’t trade it for just about anything.
About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes historical mysteries and works as a history museum curator.
I subscribe to more than my share of email newsletters. I read many of them every week, but one I genuinely look forward to getting is Austin Kleon‘s. Austin is a writer/artist/creative who cheers for us all in our creative efforts (you’ve probably seen his Steal Like An Artist), and he puts out a great weekly newsletter.
So, who is George Brown Goode?
In this week’s newsletter, Austin talks about starting his new notebooks by selecting a “guardian spirit” for it. I love this idea. I always have two notebooks. I keep a notebook for personal stuff, fiction, whatever — *my* stuff. I also keep one for work, officially my Curator’s Log. Now, in personal notebooks I’ll add a “guardian spirit”, but it requires a bit of thought.
For my Curator’s Log, there’s only one choice: George Brown Goode. Wikipedia has a good, though brief, article on him. I found him during my studies in Museum Science back when I was a curator larva. Goode was way ahead of his time on museum theory and understanding, believing that museums were really a place for everyone and not only that museums have a duty to the public. It will likely shock some, but these can be revolutionary ideas even today in many institutions. GBG also basically worked himself to death by the age of 45 — basically by ignoring what we now call ‘self-care,’ something that people who are deeply passionate about their work also need to remember.
So, I made this and pasted it into my Curator’s Log this morning, featuring GBG with one of my favorite quotes from him:
“The Future of Museums” by George Brown Goode, 1901.
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With you while you curate…
So, thank you Austin Kleon for the great idea and George Brown Goode for the inspiration. Do you keep a notebook? Do you have a Spirit Guardians for your passions? I’d love to learn about them! Leave a comment!
About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes historical mysteries and works as a history museum curator.
