Hello fellow history lovers! My name is Megan Stoffer, the
History Center’s NAII intern, and I have been tasked
with writing these blog entries for your reading pleasure. To begin this
hopefully exciting relationship, let me introduce myself a bit.
I’m a senior at IPFW working towards earning my degree in
history. I enjoy reading, writing, and collecting comic books when I’m not
doing school work (though I’m usually always doing school work). I love history
and hope to go into museum studies once I complete my undergraduate schooling.
It’s a pleasure to meet you, now let’s get on to the fun
stuff.
As an
intern, I’m privy to a lot of really cool behind the scenes things here at the
History Center. I get to work with some pretty awesome people, handle a lot of
really awesome artifacts not on display, and, more often than not, get to
discover pieces that have been hiding in storage for decades. These mystery
pieces, as I like to call them, sometimes range from artifacts that have gone
missing from their original locations to pieces with no accession number (the
little number coding system we use for cataloging artifacts) or written
information regarding the acquisition or history of the piece. Sometimes my job
involves a little bit of detective work as I research an object and try to
learn the history behind it so as to better record the past for future use.
This blog
is going to be centered on my experiences as a detective/intern. I want to
share with you the interesting things I find, the work I do when handling
artifacts, and the many things I learn from the awesome staff here at the
History Center. My main job here is cataloging the Center’s fine arts
collection, which means I handle a lot of artwork and prints. I’ve found some
really great pieces that I want to share with everyone and this blog is how I’m
going to do it.
Such as
this beautiful print, accession number 83.31.191 B.
This is a print I found my first week on the job. When
preparing an object for cataloging, the first thing you do is check for
details that could aid in description and identification. This print has
writing on it, similar to that of an autograph. “To Mr. Harry A. Achenbach” is
pretty easily made out, but the signature itself gave me some trouble. Josef
??? The fancy script made the last name look like it began with an ‘Lh’ but
that didn’t give me any help in coming up with a last name, at least not a
common American one.
What’s an intern to do?
Consult the written donation records! Inside the filing
cabinet I was able to locate the original donation card that included the name
of our mystery autographer, one Josef Lhevinne. Upon further research I learned
that Mr. Lhevinne was a very famous Russian pianist who moved to New York City
in 1919 and taught at the Julliard Graduate School of Music, the dates
coinciding with the date on the autograph, January 1924.[1] This helped me
to flesh out a formerly empty database article with helpful information on Mr.
Lhevinne and his exciting
career.
Listen to a recording of him performing Chopin's Etude in G# Minor here.
Though only a small mystery, this artifact has stuck with
me as one of my favorites so far. I had a lot of fun researching Mr. Lhevinne
and his contributions to early 20th century music and I hope to
share more of my adventures in Collections over the semester! Until next time!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XCj-j7TBTY
No comments:
Post a Comment