Book: The Public Library by Robert Dawson

Last night I read The Public Library, A Photographic Essay by Robert Dawson. I didn’t borrow it from my public library, which is the Carnegie-built Webster branch of the New York Public Library. It’s at the end of my street … Continue reading

Museum Monday: Why Set Collections Priorities for Emergencies? How to Get Started

Ready NYC has named their family emergency preparedness campaign “Winging it is not an emergency plan.” This may resonate with you if you have ever promoted an emergency preparedness effort, only to be told “each emergency is different. We can’t figure out … Continue reading

Museum Monday: New Frontiers

This month I begin a new venture: developing a preservation and emergency consulting practice. You can visit my new website at www.rebeccafifieldpreservation.com. I’ve largely been an institutional creature up to this point in my career. I crave process and figuring out systems … Continue reading

Transportation Tuesday – B&O Centenary Pageant, 1927

Ladies in nymph-like attire twirling and leaping through fields – sounds like the turn of the century pageantry movement to me. The Centenary Pageant in 1927 for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad is a rather late occurrence of this type … Continue reading

Museum Monday: Ten Things in the Indiana State Museum’s Video that Make Me Happy

What makes me happy when I watch the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites Happy video? See it here! Double-sided side truck Not one, but two fume hoods Heritage Preservation’s Emergency Salvage and Response Wheel Labeled archive boxes Blackout/dust covers … Continue reading

Stripey Runaway Buys 10 Dozen Continental Buttons at a Vendue-Store in 1784

I was playing around on America’s Historical Newspapers, a digital subscription newspaper archive based on the American Antiquarian Society’s collection of historical newspapers. My mother’s family has been based in Harford County, Maryland for almost 400 years. A search on … Continue reading

18th Century Convicts Marched from Newgate to the Port

Convicts made up one of the significant immigrant populations to the American colonies in the eighteenth century. But try locating an image that says “convict” if you are preparing a presentation. This image from The Newgate Calendar, a tabloid-like publication … Continue reading

Museum Monday: Collection Care’s Identity Crisis

You might have had it happen. You are working in the gallery, grimacing at the amount of dust that’s built up, gently stroking a brush across an object’s surface with vacuum in hand, and a well-meaning supporter or visitor mouths … Continue reading

Crossing Wright’s Ferry on the Susquehanna, 1787

If this post already sounds familiar, see my post on the 1811-13 watercolor by Secretary to the Russian Consul-General Pavel Petrovich Svinin (MMA 42.95.37) of crossing Wright’s Ferry, near Columbia, Pennsylvania. While at Winterthur this summer for a research fellowship, I … Continue reading

George Frideric Handel and The London Foundling Hospital

The Messiah, written by George Frideric Handel in 1741 and first performed in Dublin before its launch in London, was originally meant for Easter. Many of us have attended the oratorio’s performance at Yuletide, a practice that gained popularity in … Continue reading