While every day arranging and describing the New Park Mining Collection yields fun and riveting surprises, one of the other elements of working at a museum I enjoy is seeing what happens behind the scenes of exhibit preparation.
Two weeks ago, I took this set of photos while one of the museum's many dedicated volunteers, Mary, examined an original uniform of Park City's marching band members. There are quite a few holes in the lower right front of the jacket, possibly from the tuba playing, possibly from moths.
Mary, along with Wendy (the curator of exhibits) and Emily (the archivist), decided the best way to handle displaying the jacket would be to temporarily sew in a black fabric backing and support. It's important that work of this nature (improvements done to an historic object for display purposes) be reversible, so there was a bit of discussion about the type of thread to be used.
Here, Mary is measuring for temporary mending. We're down in the research library, where we keep large copies of Park City maps from the turn of the last century (and before); great photos of the City, it's inhabitants, transportation, and events; historical objects; and some records.
Here's a close-up of the damage to the wool.
Wendy putting the band uniform pants onto her homemade mannequin.
Mary and Wendy made some adjustments to the mannequin when we discovered that its legs wouldn't fit inside the pant legs the way they are hanging in the photo. Velcro was added to the opposite sides of the "thighs" and torso, which made the pants hang "normally."
Last week, the mannequin was moved upstairs to the changing gallery in preparation for the Park City Music exhibit. On the table is a large display of a photo with removable portions that tell the stories of some of the marching band members. The tuba player, whose uniform is on the mannequin, kept playing with the band despite having the lung disease
silicosis.
Under this vitrine are pieces that go with the story of the singing cowboys. It's a great little story displayed here:
One of the biggest parts of the exhibit centers around the history of local radio station KPCW and its contributions to Park City. The station, which recently celebrated its 35th birthday, donated some of its equipment (which reminded me of my college radio days) for the exhibit. On the right side of the photo, you can just about see the pink gum stuck to the side of the console. I'm sure there's a story there, but we don't know what it is.
After taking the photos above, I went back downstairs to the library to continue working on the New Park collection. When I came back up, on my way out for the day, I saw that the gallery's preparation was in full swing.
I can only imagine how inviting the exhibit will be on Monday.
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