Welcome to a special invitation from the Northeast Georgia History center. Join us for a delightful Valentine's Day tea on Saturday, February 10, with seating options at 11:00 a.m. And 01:00 p.m. This isn't just your ordinary tea party, it's a journey through the heart of Valentine's Day history, accompanied by handpicked selection of fine teas and a delightful mix of sweet and savory treats. Whether you're a history buff or just looking for a unique way to celebrate love, this event promises an engaging experience. Dive into the fascinating origins and evolution of Valentine's Day, all while savoring exquisite teas and delicious bites. Tickets are available for members at 35 and 45. For nonmembers, the experience doesn't end with the tea. Guests are also invited to tour our galleries and continue exploring the rich tapestry of history at the Northeast Georgia History center. Visit www.negahc.org slash events.

Hello everyone, and welcome back to then again the podcast of the Northeast Georgia History Center. I am Marie Bartlett, the director of the AdA May Ivester Education center here, and today I have with me Brandon Butts, the curator of the John L. Whaley Gallery at the Genesee Country Village and Museum. Thank you so much for being with me today.

Thank you so much for having me. It's quite a pleasure.

So can you introduce yourself to our listeners and tell us a little bit about your background and how you became a curator?

Absolutely. So again, my name is Brandon Brooks. I work as curator of the John L. Whaley Gallery and I've been in this position since March of 2020. So crazy time to start a completely new career. Before that, I was working for just over a decade in the mental health sector here in Rochester, New York, and my education is actually in mental health. However, I am originally from the Genesee Valley region, and when I was pursuing my undergraduate at Adelphi down in New York, I took several classes at the Met. And that's when that museum germ was sort of planted in my mind and I got to see behind the scenes, their vaults, how the objects were cared for, different curators of different departments. And that was through Maya Maratov, who I believe is still one of the curators at the Met, as well as a professor of art history at Adelphi. And around 2015 2016, I reached out to Genesee Country Village, a museum, to the then curator Patricia Tyce, and I expressed, you know, my interest. I love old things. I love old clothes. I love artwork. I love antiques. How can I get more involved and that turned into a volunteer position, which turned into an internship, which turned into a position. And about five years into working with Patricia, I had learned the ins and outs of curation, object care, fashion history through Patricia and just voracious reading and the University of YouTube, quite honestly. So it was a lot of hard work, a lot of passion and interest. And I know this sounds scary, I don't mean to scare any young people, but I was also at the right place at the right time. So that serendipity really played a big role in this career life change for me, quite frankly.

I feel that because I also was hired to my position in 2020, in May of 2020, to come on in that time was just kind of like, wow, okay, what are we doing? People are not at our museums, so how do we reach people digitally and keep going and keep our funding up? And also, I also enjoy attending the University of YouTube. It's a wonderful place. You can find so many things. What does a typical day look like for you as a curator, and what.

Are some of your main responsibilities?

Great question. So a day to day, it really depends on what time of the year I'm in, because if I'm in the spring, it's really exhibit mode. So that really, from Indigenous People's day until Mother's day, that is, when the gallery itself usually has limited open hours. So as soon as indigenous people's day comes, I am returning loans to anyone who lent us objects to whatever the current exhibit was for that open season, I am dismantling the exhibit. I am doing condition reports on all the objects, putting them back into storage. That's really what I'm doing on site, off site, at home, because the job does not end at good old 05:00 at home. I am researching, I'm writing the next exhibit. I am coordinating with sister institutions, historical societies, private collectors and collections to fill in sort of thematic holes in the exhibit, whatever next year's exhibit is going to be. So that's really one of the biggest challenges, I would say, with the role as curator is unless you work at like the Met or the Louvre or the VNA, your collection isn't, you don't have everything in your collection. I have to identify what the thematic holes are and find objects to fill that void. A lot of exhibit ideas or concepts can be information rich but object poor. And people don't come to museums because they want to read a book on a wall. They want to see the object with the supplemental information next to it. So there's a lot of interinstitutional and intra institutional collaboration that goes on on a day to day basis, on a month to month basis, on a year to year basis. So that's sort of like the nitty gritty of curation and exhibit work. On top of that, I'm developing innovative programming. I'm building connections with our community members and I'm looking at auctions and looking to expand our collection and really the interpretive breadth of our collection. We could talk for an hour about just what goes into the job day to day, but that's really sort of a 1 minute snippet of what goes on on a day to day basis in this role.

Now, you mentioned expanding your collection, so can you tell us a little bit about your collection and then how does your museum go about expanding that and collecting new objects?

Absolutely. So we have, I would say like three main collections here at Genesee Country Village Museum. So one is the fine art collection. So that is the sporting art, the wildlife art that John Whaley himself, being an avid sports person and an outdoorsman, traveled the world's collecting across the 20th century. So these are names that you're going to, some of which you'll be familiar with, like Autobond tuna Cliff, Carl Rungius, Leisure four, Frederick Remington, Bob Coon, big names in both european and american sporting and wildlife art. We also have the historic house collection. So the houses in our historic village themselves, they are accessioned into our collection all of the objects that curate those homes, depending on whatever decade you're in, in the 19th century, all of those objects are part of the permanent collection as well. So if they're like glass or metal, they can stay out during the winter and in the summer. But if they are paintings or textiles or objects that are more susceptible to temperature changes, it's frigid up here in the winter, like two degrees fahrenheit. In the summer it can be 95 and 80% humidity. So great difference in temperature and humidity will bring those objects back in before the temperature changes. And in Rochester, it could be 30 degrees one day, 80 degrees the next day. So your sinuses are in a constant state of torture living up here. We don't want our objects to go through that same amount of torture. So we bring them into the vault and then of course we have the Bruce and Susan green costume collection, which in 2010, when we purchased it from Susan, it consisted of 3500 objects. I'd say in the past 13 years it has expanded to about 4000 to 4500 objects. So the way we expand the collection, we are very blessed to have donors who will bring objects to us, will help identify them. If they don't meet our collection mission, which is mainly 19th century, we will point that donor in a good direction for another collection, historical society or museum, because we don't want objects to be lost to history, thrown away, end up in a private collection. Someone is collecting it and taking care of it. That's great. But in a private collection, those objects are no longer a public asset unless you happen to know that private collector and can go into their home and look at their collection. So we'll point them in multiple directions to furnish those individual, those generous people with a place that could be more appropriate. If we are like to be vulgar, if we're just buying the object ourself, we'll go to auctions, antique stores, all sorts of places. Now, where are we expanding our collection? Is also an important question to answer. A lot of museums are playing a game of catch up, quite frankly. For decades, one story and one narrative of american history was collected, and that being upper to upper middle class, white, cisgendered, heteronormative populations. So we, like many museums, we hold ourselves accountable for what the collection currently is and expanding upon that collection. So I would say that our collections currently represent that limited view of history. But we are working with community organizations, leaders, and knowledge keepers of different communities, and really getting guidance from people of those communities how to accurately and respectfully represent those communities in our collection. So that has been very exciting to sort of finally tell the truth in a lot of ways, a more accurate tapestry of american, and in our case, a history of upstate New York and the Genesee Valley.

That's amazing. And it's something that a lot of museums are, again, really, as you said, playing catch up with, of trying to make sure and fulfill their mission, but also to tell a wider story, the whole story of what happened in said region, place, or at said event. Now, preservation is also a crucial part of curating historical fashion or any of these historical objects. How do you ensure the long term conservation of delicate and or fragile items? Because I can just imagine some delicate fabrics, and also, this is one of those bias kind of things of rich people's clothes tend to survive because they can wear them like twice and then throw them in a closet and forget about them until 50 years later and somebody's cleaning it out. So how do you even go about finding working class outfits? Because even trying to find pictures or things, how do you try to expand that?

Oh, yeah, you'll be hard pressed to find, because those are the objects that are used the most, and then they survive the least. So you're absolutely right. There is a conservation and preservation bias with many museum collections where you're really preserving what was used the least. So does it really represent what the world looked like? Not really. So, to answer your two part question, we are very lucky that we have climate controlled vaults on our premises. We have two of them. So any object, be it artwork, textile, fashion, or home good item that cannot withstand severe temperature changes, we keep safe in those. You. I had the pleasure of giving you a tour of the Bruce and Susan Green collection. So you saw all of the custom made mounts we make for each individual piece of clothing. We are not the Met. We are not the VNA. We do not have an industrialist endowment from 100 years ago to finance expensive archival materials. So we find ways to be cost effective in the archival materials that we are using, and we create our custom mounts. If we bought one of those mounts custom made for a bonnet or gown, it could cost like $200 per mount. And when you have like, 200 hats, that adds up real darn quick. So you best find a way to support and store that object with archival materials without that big price point. That will also influence the stability of the object, will also influence not only how it's stored, but whether it should be exhibited. We have an excellent collection manager by the name of Amanda wilk on our staff, who is very essential both in her job and specifically in sort of the picking out of objects for exhibition. And if it is not stable enough to be exhibited, me wanting to see it and to show the world this amazing object is not enough to damage the object and put it on display. So another job of the curator, working with a collections manager, is finding ways to keep this public asset accessible to the public without threatening or damaging its structural integrity so we can preserve it for decades and hundreds of years to come. So instead of sort of mounting a gown on a form, you can display it on a lean board or in a study drawer, or with very intricate pictures online for online exhibits. We're very excited for 2024 for many reasons, just the eclipse being one of them here in upstate New York in the path of totality in April. But also, Amanda Wilk is the collections manager, has found a way for us to finally get our collections online as an online database. So we will begin that process. And again, for objects that are really unstable and should not be exhibited or handled or mounted or moved, that online database is going to keep that object accessible to the public. And I believe there was a second part of your question, and I'm forgetting what that was.

I was just talking about working class objects and trying to acquire those as you were talking about expanding your collection, so preserving those and then also acquiring those because they seem to disappear.

They do. And I think it's because, again, they're used the most, so they survive the least when you get them. When you happen upon an object like that, be it through an auction house like Augusta auctions, or sometimes even eBay, which can be a little dubious. Sometimes the seller doesn't know what they're selling, or they think they know and they've got their way off, or at an antique store or a donor. If you have a rare example of a working class garment, or like an at home working garment, that's a gem of your collection. It may not be the most visually exciting, but narratively. And if you were to visually examine the object, to me, that's one of the most exciting objects, because they tend to be restyled, unpicked, and reswn. In an alternative, more up to date fashion, they tend to be patched up and repaired repeatedly. You can see the wear, you can see the use. I always say this, that sort of material Textiles are the most intimate form of material culture in my mind, because they are literally and figuratively imbued with an essence of the past, be that perfume or bo, quite frankly. So when you get a working class object, not only is it imbued with that ineffable essence of the past, but you can see how much work and care and attention went into the preservation of that object within its life use. And then we are able to sort of continue that process with how we store and exhibit the object. So, for instance, a few years ago, we received a donation from Sackets harbor, and most of it was from. It's from an upper middle class, an elite family of that of the 19th century. Most of the clothing pieces were splendid in the sense that they're made out of luxurious silks and brocades, and they have hand woven haunted lace on them, and not that machine lace from good old John Heathco and his netting, but they also had some working class dresses, working class in the sense that they were worn by the staff that this family employed in their home. So it wasn't even like a uniform, a maid's uniform. It was sort of a maid to the maid, a maid that you would not want to be seen by the sort of front house family or the front house staff. It was sort of this isn't an american term, but almost like a scullery maid, like a maid to the maids. So that was incredibly exciting. And it's a basic pink cotton dress. There's actually two of them. And you could see that it originally was from the 1860s, and it was adapted over the course of 30 years into the 1890s by the multiple people that wore that dress, those two dresses. So they're very rare. You have to search. There's a lot of luck involved with finding very rare objects. There's also, as you said, the pretty things tend to survive the most for a multitude of reasons. So some people might go up to grandma's attic and find, like, oh, this old, ugly, worn out dress, and it's made out of this white and blue. Check. It wasn't expensive. I'm going to throw it out. So a lot of things also get lost to time. So there are many factors working against you in finding those working class, everyday objects. Sorry. Long winded answers. Long winded answers. You get that with me.

Oh, it's all good. That's great. It makes my job easy. So I am so excited to hear that you all are putting your collections online, because, again, I was very privileged and you were so gracious to get to show me around some of the vaults and the costume collection. And it's so wonderful, because I know you also have been patterning different states that you have them put the patterns online as a resource for people, which is absolutely amazing. And I've also gotten to see two of your exhibits that you've done with the costume collection. One was the great american wedding, which was amazing. And actually, it was right when I had just gotten engaged, and I was just like, wedding fever. It was wonderful. And then I also got to see the most recent one becoming gendered. So I enjoyed both of those so much, and all the work that your staff put into creating those. I was wondering, can you tell us a little bit what goes into choosing a theme and then interpreting this clothing? Because there's so many different aspects of clothing. As you said, I love the way you phrase it. The most intimate, really, of material culture is clothing. So how do you go about deciding on a theme and then interpreting that great question?

So, one of the pillars of the museum's mission is accuracy, but also relevance. So we tend to think of the past as being in the past, and we sort of reach this plateau of modernity where everything is just better and we know better in the future. It's all connected to the past. And some things in the past, they just did better than we do today, quite frankly. So I find it exciting finding those connections, those relevant threads that lead you from the past to the future and from the future to the past. So, particularly with the becoming gendered exhibit, as many individuals know, especially if you're living here in America, the concept of gender, what that means, what that looks like, what that should or should not look like, is, I wouldn't exactly say under debate, but it is contested. And there is a real anxiety, a societal, social, religious, cultural anxiety, it seems, in America, with any sort of real or perceived threat to an established order of gender norms. And particularly when you're looking at fashion, especially historic fashion, because you're seeing an entire century, you can see how perceptions, concepts, visualizations, constructions of gender have changed across those 100 years for men and women and anyone in between, or neither or both. And so it's easy from a historian's perspective, to see gender is a construct that does change in ebb and flow across time. Whereas when you're in time, the way we are now, it can seem like a timeless truth that never changes and has always been sort of this way or that way. So using the collection to explore modern anxieties and also to relate them to past anxieties is a great way to explore those questions from a fact based, sort of irrefutable, object based truth. We are using truths from the past to discuss questions that they were discussing in the past, and we still are discussing today. So let's take like the 1890s bicycle craze, for instance. Rochester really led the charge with the bicycle craze, and we established hundreds of miles of what they called side paths. And many people, many women wanted to bicycle. Suddenly, you could travel tens of miles in one afternoon without a horse, without a chaperone, all powered by your own legs and your own ambition. Susan B. Anthony is actually quoted as saying, the bicycle has done more for women's emancipation than anything else, so to speak. That's not the actual quote, but it's something around there. And a lot of the anxieties that were being advertised in the 1890s about women riding bicycles, and particularly wearing pants or what, knickerbockers or bloomers to ride these bicycles. People were saying, this is going to upend the bedrock of society, which is the family unit. Men are going to be home taking care of children. Women are going to be riding their bicycles with other women, and they're going to be smoking and having fun, and this is going to usurp man's righteous, God given role and society is going to dissolve. And what if you're walking your kid down the street and a woman whizzes by on her bicycle in knickerbockers and you're going to confuse that child? They're not going to know if it's a man or a woman. And some of the very same language that they use in the 1890s to deride, no pun intended, women riding bicycles and wearing knickerbockers. They're using that same language now to talk about drag in certain parts of this country. So the more things change, the more things stay the same. And we try to pick topics that have that relevant thread from the past right into the future, and we try to help our visitors make these connections between today's culture and the 19th century culture of America.

I have a perfect example of something very similar to what you're talking about. And I was just giving the other day a presentation about victorian holiday traditions, and there is a photo of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and all of their little kids around the Christmas tree. And we were talking about the popularity of the Christmas tree and all of that. Then there's the american version versus the british version, because they were like, oh, no, we have to get rid of their royalness. And I was asking the audience to spot the difference, and one of them said, oh, the little girl's dress is longer on this one. And I was like, well, actually, that's a little boy, because it was one of those tunics that comes down over the bloomers, which was what little boys wore. But it was just one of those things where it's like the idea of what a child should wear. A little boy wearing this skirt like thing was like. They were like, what? I was like, okay, and moving on, because we're talking about Christmas, and we will get into gender, as I'm sure you saw.

We talk about the frocked boys in becoming gendered. And we have a portrait on loan to us from the Holland Land office museum of a little boy in 1853 who's frocked. His name is Charles Willis. And I can't tell you how many children would come into the exhibit and read the label and say, that's a boy. He's wearing a dress. I even had, like, little five year olds. Little five year old boys say, I wouldn't be caught dead wearing that. I'd rather die than wear a frock. So it's like, wow, the gendering of children is happening younger and younger. And, I mean, if you trace the breaching age for boys in the 19th century. As the century progresses, it gets younger and younger. We're gendering the bodies of children at a younger and younger age. Nowadays we do it in utero with gender reveal parties. Before they're even in this world. We're putting these sort of gendered expectations upon their body, essentially.

Yeah. So interesting just to kind of see this idea that some people have of like, oh, well, it's always been this way. And it was like, well, actually it was very different just 100 years ago. But you would assume that sometimes people assume that it's more of our modern expectations and they're putting those on historical people.

Yeah, which is not true. They were doing it just like we are, quite frankly.

So as we start to wrap up this podcast, can you give us, what would be your advice to someone who is aspiring to work in the field of historic fashion or in curation? What would you say to them?

My advice would be, this is a small world museum. There are museums all over the world, but museum work is very small world. And once you're in, you're sort of in, and you get to know all of your coworkers and colleagues within your city, within your state, within your region very quickly. So this is one of those fields where you can still email an individual person, and that is sort of your first step in the right direction. Like if you are able to donate just one afternoon a week to your local curator. That's how I made my in. I came on Saturdays, and now, six, seven years later, I'm in this honored position that I adore. So, emailing curators, volunteering your time, getting to know your local historical societies. Almost every town in America has an historic society or a town historian. Contact that person. Say, you know, I'm interested in history. I don't exactly know where to begin. It's a small group of people that are sort of the protectors of a macrocosm of information. So you can tell them, like, I'm interested in history. I don't really know what aspect of history I should explore. Can you tell me what goes on here? And you can explore those possibilities. Perhaps you know exactly what part of history you want to explore. Find a curator or an historic society that can give you that opportunity. Let's say you live in the middle of nowhere, however, and you're like, I want to know about historic fashion, but I live in a town that has a town historian, and there's no old fashioned here, then that might require some long distance communication. You may have to. This sounds scary, especially when you're young or very established, like, you may have to move, but if that is what your heart desires, it's absolutely worth it. I would say whatever aspect of history you're interested in, reading voraciously will help you and take you miles ahead of the rest. I'm forgetting exactly what this philosophical concept is, but you'll start to read and you'll be like, oh, I know everything about this now. And then you'll read a little bit more and you'll realize, I don't know anything about this that I thought I did. So the more. Never get to a place where you think you know every aspect about the history of something. Just keep reading, and you'll learn that we really know nothing about that. In many regards, that sort of humble openness to new information will take you far as well. But again, it's a small niche industry. So if you can find a curator who is willing to give you their time, which there's so much to do as a curator, any volunteer intern is a godsend. For me, that can get you very far, especially. We're also at this time where the older generation is about to age out. So it's an auspicious, opportune time for sort of the iron is hot for you to strike it, and you should be able to. They're going to be looking for young blood, essentially, to take over these roles in the next ten to 15 years. So this is a very auspicious time to sort of make your way in through volunteering, through interning, through getting even a dose and position in a museum can lead to those connections.

Absolutely. A lot of the people who work at our history center started as volunteers. Our executive director now actually started as a volunteer here. We have so many people who started as interns or people like me who would just do about one event a month. I would come for home school days, and I did that for years until this position opened up and I was able to step into it, really. And I think that is across the museum field. The more I've been talking to people, that is exactly how it goes.

Yeah, I mean, it's such a small group of people. If you volunteer your time and you're reliable and passionate, they will take notice of you and they will make a position for you. Or if they can't make a position, their budget is limited, as a lot of nonprofit historical societies are. When someone retires or leaves, they will be like, we know that person, John Smith or Sally, is so reliable. Let's just fill this position, and we know her. She knows the collection. She knows the staff. It's a shoe in sometimes literally, if you're in historic fashion. Sorry, I couldn't let that pun go.

Yes. So for our last question, can you tell us how you've seen the field of curation, historical fashion curation, object curation evolve during your career, and where do you see its future going?

Great question. So again, I've only been in this position since 2020, so I'm about to enter in 24, my fifth season, and that first season in 2020 was semi closed. But I have seen, again, really, because of the pandemic, a lot of digital evolution with collections. There's a lot of virtual components that people are really exploring now, from virtual presentations, talks, and lectures to sort of a discussion of objects digitally through digital, online accessible archives and collections, essentially, which we're exploring and creating in 2024. Finally, and also innovative ways to tell, really broaden the story that you're telling. That's the biggest change I am seeing is museums and really the millennials coming into museums and now Gen Z coming into the museums. We want the real story. So museums are playing that game of catch up and expanding the narrative that they're able to explore. They're able to exhibit, they're able to interpret and present. So that is one of the biggest changes I'm seeing, both the technology used to tell the stories and also the broadening of the stories being told themselves. And I couldn't be more excited, quite frankly.

Then again, is a production of the Northeast Georgia History center in Gainesville, Jump. Our podcast is edited by media producer Guada Rodriguez. Our digital and on site programs are made possible by the Ada May Ivester Education center. Please join us next week for another episode of then again.