Kimberly

I'm glad you brought this up....for me a reality check on a similar
situation with shoes and shoe boxes a few months ago, when some people
thought I was daft to keep shoeboxes.

In our historic house situation, linked to a local history museum, any
packaging with local business print on it is likely to be used in an exhibit
someday, so would be kept, unless duplicate.  Most of the shoeboxes weren't
local, however, so I decided that if we had a pair of shoes that matched,
we'd keep them; if not we'd keep only one box of each shoe manufacturer not
already represented in the boxes with shoes.  As for storage, it seemed to
me that if the shoes were fully protected from touching the acidic
cardboard, that it would be o.k. to store them in their original boxes, at
least until we had more storage space. -Though hats probably should be
stored separately, as you pointed out, unless the hatbox in question has a
really good surface coating covering up the acidic cardboard.

I guess the matter of keeping or not keeping depends on the likelihood of
someday having an exhibit enhanced by having kept them. (Or, in the case of
local businesses, any research value.) I tend to favor developing a good
product package collection, because things like that get pitched by almost
everyone at home, and in only a few years, depending on how fast packaging
styles change, people are really tickled to see them in an exhibit or in an
historic house, and they can really help 'bring alive' an exhibit. In an
historic house, those mundane things make the house more interesting and
more 'real' to visitors.

As you point out, though, there is a limit to storage, so as long as you
have enough to grace an exhibit keeping the rest is likely to be redundant.
At that point, though, visual appeal may enter the discussion, and if you
have a "Wow isn't that a great hatbox" I guess you might want to keep it. So
many things to think about!

Lucy Sperlin
Butte County Historical Society
Oroville, CA

-----Original Message-----
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of Kimberly Kenney, Curator
Sent: Thursday, January 26, 2006 6:55 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: hat boxes -- to keep or not to keep?

Hello all,

We just received a fairly large collection of mid-20th
century ladies hats.

Many of these hats came to us in hat boxes, but the
problem is that 2-4 hats are inside each box.  Most of
them cannot be authenticated as "THE" hat that came in
the box, because labels don't match, etc.

I am planning to remove the hats from the boxes and
place them in acid-free storage boxes.  But what do I
do with the hat boxes themselves?

What do you do at your museum?  Do you accession the
empty boxes separately and take up double the storage
space?  Or do you pitch them?  Does it matter if you
can match the hat up with the correct box or not?  Do
"orphan" boxes matter?

There are quite a few boxes in this particular
collection -- so we aren't talking about one or two. 
Storage space -- like always, everywhere -- is
limited.

I also have this question about shoes that are or
aren't in their original boxes.  Do the boxes
themselves matter?  Usually if the boxes are
identified with a local department store, I have been
keeping them and accessioning them as their own
artifacts (that goes for shoes, hats, clothing boxes,
etc).  But if the box comes from a major department
store that could have been purchased in town or across
the country, do I want to keep that?

Incidentally, I can't ask the donor.  She is suffering
from dementia in a nursing home, and the hats were
brought in by her son, who has no more information to
provide...

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Kim Kenney


                          Kimberly A. Kenney, Curator 
Wm. McKinley Presidential Library & Museum
800 McKinley Monument Dr. NW 
Canton OH 44708 * 330-455-7043 
  * NEW EXHIBIT:  "Hearth & Home" now open and on view through April 2006.
  * McKINLEY DAY:  Help us celebrate our 25th President's birthday on
January 28, 2006 -- half-price admission!
    
"Let us ever remember that our interests are in concord, not conflict; and
that our real eminence rests in the victories of peace, not those of war."
-- 25th United States President William McKinley















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