CHM archives intern Ashley Clark worked with archivist Julie Wroblewski to process the papers of John A. McDermott, a local leader in race relations and urban affairs from the 1960s into the 1990s. This past fall, I had the opportunity to process the John A. McDermott papers at the Chicago History Museum. I had processed More
As part of Monday Night Nitrates, our new weekly photograph series, the Chicago History Museum collections staff is blogging about the process of digitizing approximately 35,000 nitrate negatives. In this post, former CHM photographer Joseph Aaron Campbell writes about the painstaking task of converting analog negatives to digital images. The task of digitizing this nitrate More
On the anniversary of a Chicago tragedy, CHM collections volunteer Robert Blythe uses one of our artifacts to tell the story of a highly respected fire chief who was killed in action. A white leather fire helmet with a noticeable repair sits in the Museum’s collection as mute testimony to one of the greatest disasters More
As part of Monday Night Nitrates, our new weekly photograph series, the Chicago History Museum collections staff is blogging about the process of digitizing approximately 35,000 nitrate negatives. In this post, CHM rights and reproductions manager Angela Hoover writes about the painstaking task of transferring and recording metadata. In September 2016, the Chicago History Museum More
CHM collections volunteer Robert Blythe writes about photographer Ron Gordon’s background and approach to capturing images. “Photography is about your own life. The story that you ultimately tell with a camera is your own story.” This is Ron Gordon’s take on his passion: photography. His images tell his story as well as a host of More
CHM collections intern Catrien Egbert recaps her work cataloging the Museum’s massive Decorative and Industrial Arts collection and highlights some memorable finds. If you’re like me, you’ve always wondered what treasures a museum’s collection might hold. Last summer, I had the opportunity to find out as the collections team continued its endeavor to catalog the More
Inside the Collection is a video series that invites you into the Chicago History Museum’s storage spaces to explore unusual, interesting artifacts from our vast collection. In this installment, senior collection manager Britta Keller Arendt shows us a pair of Inuit snow goggles, eye protection crafted and worn by the native peoples of Alaska and More
Inside the Collection is a video series that invites you into the Chicago History Museum’s storage spaces to explore unusual, interesting artifacts from our vast collection. In this installment, senior collection manager Britta Keller Arendt discusses three artifacts related to Elmer Ellsworth, a law clerk to Abraham Lincoln who became a martyr at the onset More
CHM curator Petra Slinkard takes you through the process of a gallery rotation, which helps us preserve artifacts and refresh exhibitions. The Chicago History Museum’s permanent exhibition Chicago: Crossroads of America is a 15,000-square-foot installation dedicated to our city’s rich and complex past. The installation opened in September 2006 and contains hundreds of artifacts and More
Inside the Collection is a video series that invites you into the Chicago History Museum’s storage spaces to explore unusual, interesting artifacts from our vast collection. In this installment, senior collection manager Britta Keller Arendt and summer intern Amy Sparks discuss an original traffic controller switch, c. 1926, from Chicago’s Loop. The city used this More