In the fall of 2019, I started my graduate program at UMBC and my new job as a graduate assistant for UMBC Special Collections. I was elated that as a first-year student I was tasked with curating an exhibit for our Special Collections Reading Room. I saw the opportunity as a way to become more familiar with our collections and also to have more experience with curation. In October of 2019, I began the exhibition development process which started with formulating it, through to plans for installation, and finally this moment to reflect on the process as a whole.
What this specific exhibit experience has shown me is that sometimes the job of professionals in cultural institutions is to provide knowledge of what that institution has in their care and the possibilities for further research by their patrons. I would argue that the overarching narratives of the two cases are not profoundly deep. Rather, I hope this selection of cameras and projectors will show our patrons the equipment we have, how three-dimensional objects can be used to tell narratives, big or small, and perhaps spark memories in those that remember using them.
Look out for the exhibit in the reading room display cases when Special Collections safely reopens to the public!
Jessica Riley is a second-year master’s student in UMBC's Department of History with a track in public history. Jessica's favorite part about working in Special Collections is that there is always a new topic to learn about from fanzines to daguerreotypes.
How it Started
Exhibits of course start in a number of ways. For this exhibit, our curatorial team knew we wanted to highlight the UMBC Photography Equipment Collections, however we did not know what narrative we wanted to tell or what objects would go into the exhibit. We did know we had many interesting cameras that did not make it into the large display of cameras that users of the Special Collections Reading Room are accustomed to seeing.
Existing photography equipment case in UMBC AOK Special Collections Reading Room.
Picking Objects
I initially spent many days in the large Special Collections storage room in the Library’s lower level. Most days I wore a mask (pre-COVID mask wearing) because I noticed many of the older cameras have chemicals that are beginning to break down inside of them. I slowly found the equipment I wanted to feature, mostly based on their appearance and always with the reading room audience in mind. One of the two display cases is about personal cameras, featuring a whole line of cameras that were designed for consumer audiences and fans of pop culture, from Mickey Mouse to spy gear (hi, 90s kids). I think people will enjoy seeing the unique cameras I selected.
Kodak Petite (c. 1930s). This camera came in the Kodak Coquette set which featured this blue art deco camera, a makeup compact mirror, and a lipstick.
The second of the two display cases in the reading room will have projectors, all of which I originally chose based on their aesthetics. My favorite here is the magic lantern which is from circa 1600s and used candlelight to project images from glass slides.
A typical day in Special Collections. I took this picture one week before the pandemic shutdown in March 2020.
Time for Installation
By late February, I was ready to begin pulling the objects from the lower level of the library and bringing them to the reading room. I thought it was time to install the exhibit. Up to this point, I had only seen everything coming together in a Google Drive folder with images of each piece. I drafted removal forms for all of the objects and those forms will be placed in the former storage locations. The equipment which I had pulled stayed on a cart and was moved to safe keeping until installation can be done. Unfortunately, I was not able to install the exhibit before the campus closure in early March. I am now working remotely and hope to install the exhibit this coming Spring before I graduate.
Staging cameras and visualizing groupings on top of an archival storage box before installing shelving into the case.
Reflection
What this specific exhibit experience has shown me is that sometimes the job of professionals in cultural institutions is to provide knowledge of what that institution has in their care and the possibilities for further research by their patrons. I would argue that the overarching narratives of the two cases are not profoundly deep. Rather, I hope this selection of cameras and projectors will show our patrons the equipment we have, how three-dimensional objects can be used to tell narratives, big or small, and perhaps spark memories in those that remember using them.
Look out for the exhibit in the reading room display cases when Special Collections safely reopens to the public!
Jessica Riley is a second-year master’s student in UMBC's Department of History with a track in public history. Jessica's favorite part about working in Special Collections is that there is always a new topic to learn about from fanzines to daguerreotypes.
