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
On November 26, 2017, the Secret Lives of Objects exhibition closed after a three-and-a-half-year run, requiring Museum staff to return the exhibition’s artifacts to storage. One of the largest was a Model P motor buggy sold by Sears, Roebuck & Company around 1910. To move large, heavy, or cumbersome objects off display and transport them 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