Image: Sleeve of the wedding dress of Ethel Maclean Hartley Smith (1881-1943), 1904. Donated by the Michael G. Smith and Eleanor A. Smith Verbeck Families (2013.006.01). This photo shows one of the dress sleeves, which were carefully stuffed with acid-free tissue paper to preserve their shape.
As a local history museum, our collecting mandate is quite broad: we are looking for artifacts that reflect the history of Pasadena and its surrounding communities. But that is by no means the only criterion we take into account when accepting donations.
The Museum's Collections Committee reviews donation offers at a monthly meeting. The Committee is most interested in artifacts with a strong local
provenance (made or used by a Pasadenan), that are in good condition and don't duplicate any other item in our collection. The most intangible yet important qualification, however, is that the artifacts can tell a good story.
What is an artifact that can tell a good story? Well, for example, despite an already sizable wedding dress collection (forty gowns and counting), we recently accepted a wedding gown from 1904. Why? It was more than just a beautifully preserved dress. It was worn by a local bride who was married at Pasadena Presbyterian Church to one of the city's first firemen. The gown
came complete with the original shoes, wedding announcement and photo, and a biography of the family. This combination of artifacts illuminate an era of Pasadena's history.
And, in order to ensure the long-term preservation of the dress, the donor graciously complied with our request to have the gown dry-cleaned prior to donation and donated funds to cover the cost of purchasing an archival box. Collaborations like this between the Museum and donors ensure their treasures are properly stored and preserved for future generations.
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The Collections Quarterly, sent out four times a year, features new acquisitions as well as select items from the Archives, art and artifacts collection, and the Fenyes-Curtin-Paloheimo collections.
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Archives Feature
Freezing Negatives Project
 PMH maintains the area's largest and most complete photographic archives of Pasadena and its environs, numbering an estimated one million photographic images. This collection attracts researchers worldwide and is an invaluable resource for preserving Pasadena's history. A big part of this collection is in the form of negatives. There are thousands upon thousands of acetate negatives in our environmentally controlled Archives, where appropriate temperature and humidity is maintained. Although it is a much better to store negatives in the Archives rather than at room temperature, it is not an optimum environment for preservation. According to experts in the field, at the present conditions the negatives will be destroyed in the next twenty years. Conservators recommend freezing negatives, which will preserve them for hundreds of years.
We are pleased to announce that our first freezer is ready for some of our oldest negatives. We are trying to raise funds for four additional freezers. Look for an announcement later this year of our crowd source funding campaign to raise funds for additional freezers. We hope you will support us in preserving the valuable Pasadena history captured in these negatives.
Image: Volunteer Jean O'Hagan processing negatives to be frozen (Born Digital Image)
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Collections Feature
A Good Cleaning Reveals a Beautiful Forest Glen William Keith was a Scottish-born landscape painter who made his home in San Francisco, and his work caught the discerning eye of Eva Fenyes. She once recalled, "Every time I visited San Francisco I found my way to Keith's studio, and I generally bought a picture." Indeed, works painted by Keith hang in the drawing room, foyer, and studio of the Fenyes Mansion. However, before the Fenyes Mansion's grand reopening in 2012, PMH staff and docents noticed that a couple of the Keith paintings looked a bit too dark. Unlike Keith's early work that often depicted scenes in bright sunlight, his later work (including the paintings in the Fenyes collection) often showed landscapes later in the day, particularly at twilight. Dirt, and sometimes even a painting's own varnish, can make details in an already dark painting hard to decipher. But one cannot simply wipe off a painting. The work can only be done by a professionally-trained painting conservator. Two paintings, Forest Glen (pictured above) and Sunset Glow were sent to the studio of Maurine St. Gaudens, where they were expertly cleaned before going back on view. These paintings, along with many other works in the Fenyes art collection, are available for viewing during guided tours of the Fenyes Mansion. Conservation work on all of the paintings in the Fenyes-Curtin-Paloheimo Collection is generously supported by the Paloheimo Foundation.
Image: William Keith (1838-1911). "Forest Glen," circa 1905. Oil on canvas, 20 x 26 in. (2000.019.0070). Gift of The Y.A. and Leonora Curtin Paloheimo Trust
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Fenyes Feature
The Work of a Photo Archivist
 Each Wednesday in the Archives you will find Kim Walters, archivist and anthropologist, using her considerable knowledge of the Fenyes, Curtin, and Paloheimo families, as well as her archiving expertise and technical skills, to preserve the families' negatives. Her invaluable work is a multilayered, time intensive process requiring twenty to thirty minutes for each negative. First she scans the negative and uses Photoshop to adjust the contrast and save the image in two digital formats-master and ready for use. Next she evaluates and researches the historic content of the image. She then searches for and compares the image with photographs in the
 family albums, often discovering names and places to be cross referenced with the negative. Finally, she uses this work to create a Past Perfect record that will allow researchers to find relevant images without handling the negatives or the photo albums. Each negative is placed in an archival sleeve and labeled with its unique identification number in preparation for freezing. The result is the long-term preservation of the negative, the discovery of valuable information, and accessibility to the image with its information, all for the benefit of researchers today and in the future. Images: (above) Kim Walters at work in the Archives; (below) In this newly discovered image of Leonora Curtin, she stands with one of her many dogs near a sign reading "Notice to Campers." Further research might identify the automobile in the background. (FCP.108.1.1) |
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