Monthly Archives: June 2009

New art work in Ching Reading Room

As the Curator of Collections, it is my responsability to rotate the objects on permanent display.  This week I have been busy working on changing the hanging art work that complemented the walls in the Ching Reading Room.

If you are unfamiliar with our facility, the Ching Reading Room is located on the ground floor of the Litchfield History Museum and is part of the Helga J. Ingraham Memorial Library.  It is most often used by researchers who visit the Library in order to study some aspect of Litchfield history.

The Litchfield Historical Society has an extensive collection of paintings of both Litchfield residents and works completed by local artists.  The Ching Reading Room provides the ideal venue in which to showcase many of these pieces that would other wise sit in storage.

For the past two years we have had a collection of landscape paintings by various local artists on display.  I have decided to continue this theme but introduce new paintings to the room.  The Ching Reading Room now features paintings by Robert Nisbit (1879-1961) of Kent, CT; Adelaide Deming (1864-1956), Stanley Mortimer (1896-1984), and Nils Hogner (1898-1970) all of Litchfield, CT.

The paintings showcase a variety of artistic styles and illustrate the vibrant artistic community that existed in the northwest hills throughout the twentieth century.

The Helga J. Ingraham Memorial Library is open Tuesday through Friday from 10:00-12:00 and 1:00 to 4:00.  We invite you to stop by and check out these new changes.

Summer Interns

Each summer the Historical Society welcomes interns to the museum.  The number of interns has varied from year to year.  At times we may only have one or two or as in the summer of 2007 we had nine in one summer!  Needless to say that summer there was always a jockeying for work space and the lunch table was extremely crowded.

This year we have three interns.  Sharon will be working with the Curator of Collections Juile Frey, Katie will be working with Education Coordinator Linda Loveday, and Rita will be working with Curator of Library & Archives Linda Hocking.

Sharon has already started and has been busy assisting Julie in an inventory of the art storage racks at the Curatorial Storage Center and inventorying the collection of textileworking equipment.   She and Julie will spend a majority of the summer moving collections from the third floor storage room in the Litchfield History Museum to the second floor of the Curatorial Storage Center.   Sharon will also be working on the Litchfield Female Academy/Litchfield Law School database, completing some preliminary research and entering the Law School list into an excel document.

Katie will start work next week and Linda Loveday plans to have her work on developing educational programs geared to Cub Scout and Boy Scout troops.  The Litchfield Historical Society has a strong relationship with area Girl Scout troops and is working to develop a similar programs with the Boy Scouts.

Rita began her project a few weeks ago.  She will assist in completing the project to catalog  library books.  The cataloging is being completed off site, and the catalogers are in need of images of selections from the rare books in order to assign call numbers.  Rita will take digital photos and transmit them to the cataloging company.  Very soon some of the records they have created will be available via the state library catalog.  Rita will also work on data entry for the Litchfield Law School student list.

All three will be receiving college credit for their work at the Historical Society as well as learning many of the practical skills and everyday tasks required to work in a museum.

We welcome them and hope they have a fun and educational summer!