Caring for Photographic Negatives

By: John Hart, Assistant Curator of Collections
This blog was inspired by a wonderful friend of the museum who called me last week to ask me about caring for photographic negatives. There are probably fewer negatives out there than there was only a few years ago, thanks in part to advances in digital technology, but for many of us, myself included, we have negatives lying around the house that we’ve had for many years.

So how do you care for those negatives when you get them home? What if you’re cleaning out granny’s attic and find boxes and boxes of old negatives? And what’s the weird smell? Well, hopefully this will help explain some of the mystery behind negatives.

Caring for them is pretty easy actually. If they’re in strips, you can buy negative sleeves in a variety of sizes from online retailers like Light Impressions. You can even buy them with holes punched in the sides to load them into binders. But you have to keep in mind that you need something inert, meaning that it doesn’t react to temperature and humidity and doesn’t throw off gases which could harm your film. Make sure you’re getting protectors that are made of polyethylene or polypropylene. Both are archivally safe, inert plastics that nearly every museum uses in one way or another.

If you find negatives in an attic or in a basement, chances are they’ll have some condition issues, especially if it’s a damp or extremely warm environment. In some cases, the negatives might be too far gone to save, but if you’re lucky you can save them. First, get them to a stable environment. Usually the main floor of a house is the best place since the temperature and humidity are more or less stable. Carefully separate them and put them into the protectors, but use caution, over time they may have fused and if you pull too hard, you’re likely to ruin them. You may even want to consider scanning them like we do at the museum. We’ll scan at a high resolution once and then make sure the negative is preserved and housed safely, and only re-scanned it if it’s absolutely necessary or if better scanning technology emerges.

And finally, you’ve found a box of negatives and when you open it up, it smells like vinegar. Congratulations, you’ve just found negatives made from cellulose nitrate. There’s a lot of science behind why cellulose nitrate film smells like vinegar, but it’s bad. Very bad. If you smell vinegar, that means the film is staring to break down. Eventually it’ll completely degrade so your best bet is to scan the film at the highest resolution you can before it disintegrates or consult a conservator or film conservation company and have the negative transferred to a new film stock. The National Film Preservation Foundation can provide more information on this method, which is what they recommend.

Next time I’ll talk about the Smith-Telfer Photographic Collection which the New York State Historical Association is fortunate to have been given. You may have never seen these types of negatives before either. Think negatives on glass.

Kingfisher Tower

This is the third in a series of posts by guest blogger, Michele Harvey. Fenimore Art Museum will exhibit new work by Harvey in the exhibition Watermark: Michele Harvey & Glimmerglass, beginning April 1, 2010.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel… Halfway up Glimmerglass (Otsego Lake) lies Kingfisher Tower. A romantic, 60-foot, gothic revival folly, built by Edward Clark in 1876. Jutting out on a tiny spit of land, it seems to float somewhere off shore. Dreaming over old postcards and internet images wouldn’t do. I had to see it myself.

At the southern tip of Otsego Lake lies The Glimmerglass Queen. A small, lovely tour boat, she skims across the water, affording spectacular views and long approaches to Kingfisher Tower. Glimmerglass is 168 feet deep (some say much deeper) and 9 miles wide, surrounded by unspoiled hills that come to drink at the water’s edge. The sense of time and space is different here. The glitter of the lake’s light cast its spell, not just upon me, but on all my fellow passengers too. There is something primal about the horizontal lines of a lake or plain surrounded by forest. Something that harks back to our ancestors’ and hunters' roots. Here it still is found, preserved, with an unlikely, romantic, miniature castle to dream on. One where dragons, damsels and knights may play in ageless imagination.

One may view the tower from land, from Lakefront Park, at the southernmost tip of the lake. It's also there you can purchase tickets for The Glimmerglass Queen's daily (in season) boat tours. Kingfisher Tower is difficult to view from other public spots; although it's across the lake from Brookwood Garden, it's hidden by a fringe of trees. The beauties of Otsego Lake are best seen (including the grounds of The Fenimore Art Museum) from the top of this little tour boat. It travels at a leisurely pace half way up the lake, close to the Tower and back down the other side. The size and the depth of the lake, Kingfisher Tower, the skies and marvelous views are well worth the admission.

Above: Watercolor sketches of Kingfisher Tower on Otsego Lake. Courtesy of Michele Harvey.

A Pot of Gold

By Eva Fognell. Curator Thaw Collection of American Indian Art

While many familiar objects from the Thaw Collection are currently on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art, we are installing several rarely-seen objects into the Thaw gallery. One of the pieces I am very excited about is a jar from the Picuris pueblo in New Mexico made by artist Anthony Durand (1956-2009). The Picuris geographical area contains a micaceous material that produces a high luster when used as slip and gives the jars a golden glow.

When Durand returned to Picuris pueblo in 1976, he became intent on preventing the Picuris micaceous tradition of pottery from dying out. With inspiration from his grandmother, and using an old and unsigned Picuris pot as an example, he was able to reproduce the traditional golden color and high luster that has since become standard to his works. Pottery fragments from the ruins of the old Picuris pueblo have also inspired some of his molded detail. Since the pottery of Picuris was traditionally made for cooking, it has no painted decorations but instead includes sculpted details. You can see these in the detail of the jar. Anthony Durand received several awards and honorable mention at the Santa Fe Indian Market.

I’ll keep you posted on other remarkable objects as they get installed for Spring re-opening.

I hope many of our visitors will be as enthralled by this golden pot as I am! Yes, we do have a pot of gold!

Above: Jar, 1994, by Anthony Durand (1956-2009) Picuris, New Mexico, micaeceous clay, T0435.

The Ins and Outs of Exhibit Catalogues

By: John Hart, Assistant Curator of Collections

I’m sure you’ve all seen them. Books in a gift shop which discuss a specific exhibit in a museum, sometimes small, sometimes not. Either way, if you like the art, chances are you’ll learn more about the art and artist if you purchase an exhibit catalogue.

They’re usually written by scholars in the field and include much more information than you might find in the exhibit. But there’s a lot that goes on behind-the-scenes before you, the visitor, see them on a shelf. Articles have to be written, images have to be collected, proofs have to be sent to the lending institutions, and edit, upon edit, upon edit to get the final product readable by someone who isn’t an art historian.

Mrs. Abbott Lawrence Rotch, 1903. By John Singer Sargent. Image courtesy of the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE

That’s what we’re doing right now with the upcoming exhibit, John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Praise of Women. Since we’ve been preparator-less for about six months and I handle rights and reproduction requests for NYSHA’s collection at Fenimore Art Museum, I was asked by Paul D’Ambrosio and Michelle Murdock to work on gathering the images. All of the paintings that are being loaned for the exhibit will be included in the catalogue and Paul and Dr. Patricia Hills are writing the text to accompany the images. Trust me, if you like Sargent, you’ll like the catalogue. I know from personal experience that Paul is great at teaching people about art and artists.

John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Praise of Women opens in May and runs through December and I invite you all to come and see it (and buy a catalogue too). You’ll be in for a treat since we’ll have Empire Waists, Bustles and Lace in the gallery right next to Sargent and can see examples of the fashions during the 19th-century.

Wrapping it up in Cleveland

By: Chris Rossi, Associate Curator of Exhibitions
Taking an exhibit on the road is always an adventure. Once you have prepared and packed and shipped the objects you actually have to install them at your new venue. Depending on the size and location of the museum you are taking your work to you could be working with a large crew or just a few people.

Overseeing the installation of the Thaw material at Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) was made easy for Eva and I by the large, welcoming, and proficient crew assigned to the task. Here at home at Fenimore Art Museum we have a smaller staff and are used to doing much of the work ourselves. At CMA there is someone to curate the show, someone to design the exhibit, someone to oversee objects, a crew to make mounts, a crew to install artwork, someone for making the labels, and someone to do the lighting. And I am probably missing someone in the vast array of folks that make their exhibits happen. It was amazing to see all of these different elements coordinated and brought together for a stunning final product.

(Southwest Gallery almost complete)

As with all exhibit installations, there were snafus along the way. The appropriate parties calmly put their heads together and came up with smart solutions that were then quickly and expertly executed by the appropriate team member.

With Thaw now installed it’s time for me to put my designer/installer/graphics hats all back on and get to work on our spring exhibits here at home. It was wonderful to have such a big team to pull the exhibit together with in Cleveland, but I do look forward to working with our little home crew to make Fenimore shine for our April 1 opening.

(CMA lighting designer, Mark, works on a tricky northwest coast case)

A catalog for Art of the American Indians: The Thaw Collection

By: Michelle L. Murdock, Curator of Exhibitions
 As I write this, we are about to “put the catalog to bed.” It has earned a good night’s sleep for sure. For the past few weeks I and my colleagues have been editing and proofing the new catalog that accompanies our traveling exhibition, Art of the American Indians: The Thaw Collection which debuts at the Cleveland Museum of Art on March 7th. I am absolutely in love with this book. It includes new essays by several authors including Janet C. Berlo, Ruth B. Phillips, Joe D. Horse Capture, Aldona Jonaitis, Steven A. LeBlanc and Norman Vorano. Several other scholars also contributed: D.Y. Begay, Marvin Cohodas, Chuna McIntyre, Scott Meachum, Marla Redcorn-Miller and Megan Smetzer.

Rather than publishing typical regional surveys of American Indian material, the authors were invited to choose an idiosyncratic approach to their essays, which offers the reader new insights into objects, makers and cultures. Phillips, for example, compares & contrasts three Great Lakes bags from the Collection, while Jonaitis discusses the art and culture of food in the Northwest Coast, as exemplified by objects from the Collection. The shorter essays in the catalogue demonstrate the varied ways that particular objects of Native art can be studied, understood, and appreciated, using diverse critical methods. The combination of these varied approaches has resulted in unique and engaging storylines.

And the design is just gorgeous. Our long-time publication designers at Nadeau Design Associates in Utica, N.Y. have worked their magic again. Their innovative approach this time includes details of many artifacts reproduced at full size. This allows readers to appreciate the intricacies of quillwork, beadwork, etching and painting.

The book Art of the American Indians: The Thaw Collection will be available from our Museum Shop very soon!