History in Glass: the USS Olympia commemorative pitcher

Douglas Kendall, Curator of Collections

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my visit to Philadelphia for the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums annual meeting. Moored near the conference hotel is one of America’s most famous naval vessels, USS Olympia, a National Historic Landmark and Admiral George Dewey’s flagship during the Spanish-American War. At least $10 million is now needed to prevent Olympia from sinking into Philadelphia harbor.

If such a fate seems unfortunate today, it would have been unthinkable in the aftermath of Dewey’s stunning victory at the Battle of Manila Bay. Admiral Dewey, Captain Charles Vernon Gridley and Olympia herself were amongst the best-known heroes of the Spanish American War, which established the United States as a world power.

Americans love to commemorate heroes and manufacturers love to fill the need for commemorative items. We have an Olympia commemorative pitcher in the Fenimore Art Museum collection that was made soon after the Battle of Manila Bay by the Beatty-Brady Glass Company of Dunkirk, Indiana. The pressed glass pitcher is illustrated with a bust of Dewey, the famous words with which he began the battle (“Gridley, you may fire when ready.”), and a list of the ships in Dewey’s fleet.

Pitcher, Bust of Admiral Dewey

Pitcher, front view

Pitcher, list of ships in fleet

Pressed glass, Beatty-Brady Glass Company, Dunkirk, IN, ca. 1898-1900. Gift of Preston Bassett, N0098.1976

Pressed glass technology allowed mass production of elaborately decorated glassware and this pitcher is a fine example of that technique. Around the base of the pitcher, the glassmakers employed a motif of minie balls or artillery shells. An eagle sits atop the United State shield above the Dewey quotation. A marine holds the American flag. Sunbursts and other small decorative elements complete the ornamentation of the pitcher.

You can still buy Olympia commemoratives at the Independence Seaport Museum shop, but none so elaborate as the Beatty-Brady pitcher. One hopes that the commemoratives don’t outlast that which they celebrate.

REMINDER! Here is the list of the candidates for the exhibition voting. The poll appears on the right. Cast your vote!

What Lies Below the Surface, July 21, 2009. Featured Major General Baron von Steuben by Ralph Earl.

Musical Craftsmanship, July 28, 2009. Featured a Melodeon.

A Chair Fit for a Pot, October 20, 2009. Featured a corner chair.

What did you do on your summer vacation?, November 17, 2009. Featured photos of Otsego Lake.

The Campbell Family's Service, November 26, 2009. Featured a powderhorn and swords.

Planes, Trains and...nope, Just a Train, December 15, 2009. Featured a model train engine.

A Statue with a Split Personality, June 10, 2010. Featured a statue titled "The Last of the Mohicans."

Birth of the United States Navy, October 15, 2010. Featured a litho of the Kearsarge and the Constitution.

View of Cold Spring and Mount Taurus, December 2, 2008. Featured a painting of the same name by Thomas Chambers.

Floral Quilts and Children's Folk Portraits, February 24, 2009. Featured Eliza Smith by an unidentified artist.

Eunice Pinney Mourning Pictures, April 23, 2009. Featured mourning pictures by Eunice Pinney.

Early Photography Meets 20th Century Sleuthing, July 9, 2009. Featured an extending box camera.

Kopp Collection, July 14, 2009. Featured advertising materials with images of American Indians.

Philadelphia Story: the 2010 Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums Meeting

Douglas Kendall, Curator of Collections

Last week I had the opportunity to attend “Revolutionizing Museums,” the annual meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums on the Delaware River waterfront in Philadelphia. MAAM is our regional affiliate of the American Association of Museums. Every fall, museum professionals from New York to the District of Columbia gather to celebrate each others’ successes, brainstorm common challenges, learn new things and take away good ideas that can be adapted and reshaped for use at their own museums.

Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums, Washington, D.C., 2010.

I attended several sessions related to museum collections care and access, since those are my areas of responsibility here at the Fenimore Art Museum and The Farmers’ Museum. Things That Go Bump in the Night…When Collections Strike Back focused on dealing with artifacts and artwork that are potentially dangerous. Fortunately, we don’t have a fluoroscope—an x-ray shoe-fitting machine of dubious use in getting the right fit that also bathed customers and clerks in radiation—or a large medical collection of “wet specimens” like Philadelphia’s Mutter Museum, but every museum curator needs to be alert to the possibility of folks wanting to donate antique guns and cannonballs that could still be loaded or early plastics and film that can spontaneously combust.

Museum of the Macabre®, Philadelphia, PA, 2008-2010.

Lots of museums are finding new ways of sharing collections online (see highlights of the Fenimore Art Museum’s here). At the conference, we heard about the Museum of the Macabre®, which for now is entirely online. The Museum’s founders spoke about the numerous free software tools available online that allowed them to create a website that showcases their collections, educates the public about “the historical significance of the afterlife,” and allows visitors to add their own comments and content to the site. Many traditional museums with physical locations but small budgets can take advantage of these same web tools to make their collections more accessible to the public.

Photo, 2007 by Jan’s Cat/Felix Gomes,

re-used with permission under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Floating just outside the conference hotel is an illustration of some of the challenges faced by museums today: the USS Olympia. It is a National Historic Landmark, the flagship of Admiral Dewey’s fleet during the Spanish-American War. Decommissioned in 1922 and privatized in 1957, the ship is now part of the Independence Seaport Museum, which has spent $5.5 million on preservation since 1996. Unfortunately, at least $10 million is now needed to prevent Olympia from sinking at its mooring within the next 3 years. This month, the Museum is ending public tours of the ship due to its current condition.

I’ve returned to Cooperstown more aware than ever of the evolving nature of our museums—new virtual museums popping up, hoping to eventually have a bricks-and-mortar site—others struggling with the inherent disadvantages of physically preserving art and heritage for future generations. And now I’m back to trying to both preserve and share our collections from our little village in upstate New York.

If you want to find out more about the meeting, you can visit MAAM’s own blog on the Philadelphia conference.