Service Learning Update: Lauren Wojcik, McFarland Historical Society

With support from the Caxambas Foundation, the Material Culture Program is once again sponsoring three undergraduate summer service learners. Each student has partnered with a Wisconsin museum or historical society to help them digitize and share their collections online. Our third and final update comes from Art and Scandinavian Studies major Lauren Wojcik, who provides a closer look at some of the objects at the McFarland Historical Society.

Folk objects brought to the United States by immigrants from Norway have cultural significance, but so too do the works of folk art created by the first and later generations of Norwegians in American. The McFarland Historical Society museum collection contains examples of these objects, evincing the cultural regeneration of Norwegian American heritage and illustrating the link between folk arts created in Norway during the 19^th century and the uniquely Norwegian American folk arts created in Wisconsin during the 20^th and 21^st centuries. Earlier in the summer I spent two full days photographing and writing notes about some of these objects, which I've selected to add to the digital collection started by last year's Summer Service Learner, Katie Dreps.

One aspect of folk art from the McFarland collection in which we see a clear progression and transformation in style across generations of Norwegian Americans is rosemaling, a traditional form of painting with variations in style throughout the regions of Norway. Many examples of rosemaling, mostly functional objects like boxes, drinking bowls or trunks for the passage across the Atlantic, were brought to south central Wisconsin when Norwegian immigrants settled here in the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

Per Lysne, an artist from Sogn, Norway who immigrated to Stoughton, Wisconsin in 1907, helped popularize rosemaling in the United States. He gained special recognition when some of his pieces were featured in a 1933 issue of Vogue magazine. Lysne’s smorgasbord plate, which he produced and sold many copies of and which was intended to be hung on a wall, became his trademark piece. Lysne’s style closely mirrors the regional style from the Sogn area, but his pieces were meant to decorate the modern American home.

Per Lysne, Smorgasbord plate, 1944. 15 ¾” diameter. Stoughton, Wisconsin. McFarland Historical Society.

Thanks to artists like Per Lysne, rosemaling saw a renaissance in the mid late 1960s and 70s as a way for later generations of Norwegian-Americans to discover their identity and celebrate their ethnic pride. Successors of Lysne, like Ethel Kvalheim of Stoughton, Clarice Christensen of Oregon, and many others throughout the upper Midwest represent the revival of Norwegian folk arts in the United States. Much like the development of regional variations in style that occurred in 19^th century folk art in Norway, Norwegian American rosemaling developed a distinct flavor independent of the Norwegian s­tyle.

Clarice Christensen, Rosemaled wooden spoon. ½” high, 10” long, 2 ¾” wide (bowl). Oregon, Wisconsin. McFarland Historical Society.

We can trace the development of rosemaling to the present day with a contemporary example of this reinterpretation of a traditional folk art in the form of a 3D animation by artist Dave Beck titled Smorgasbord (after Per Lysne). Though Beck’s piece is not in the McFarland collection it is a reinterpretation of Lysne’s trademark smorgasbord plate. According to Beck, Smorgasbord (after Per Lysne)  “…represents how cultural traditions and values depend on reinvention and rebirth, so that they may survive (and perhaps even flourish) for future generations.” 

Smorgasbord (after Per Lysne) from Dave Beck on Vimeo. Used with permission of the artist.

I’m currently at the research stage for these objects, gathering information and details into short descriptions that will accompany the photos in the digital collection. Looking back on my research, I realize that rosemaling is just one example of the Norwegian heritage kept alive by the generations of Norwegian-Americans. We see this revival in other areas of artistic expression and elsewhere such as in the reinterpretation of traditions such as Syttende Mai festivals, lutefisk dinners and Norwegian heritage organizations throughout United States. Working closely with the objects in the collection at the McFarland Historical Society–both those created in Norway and those created by Norwegian Americans–and researching both the Norwegian immigrant experience in the United States and the experience of their descendants has allowed me to see the progression of culture, identity and ethnic pride in the Norwegian American heritage that is so prevalent throughout southern Wisconsin.

Sources:

Lovoll, Odd S. The Promise of America: A History of the Norwegian-American People. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.

Martin, Philip. Rosemaling in the Upper Midwest. Mount Horeb: Wisconsin Folk Museum, 1989.

Nelson, Marion, ed. Norwegian Folk Art: The Migration of a Tradition. New York: Abbeville Press, 1995.

www.davebeck.org

--Lauren Wojcik

Service Learning Update: Katey Smith, Middleton Area Historical Society

With support from the Caxambas Foundation, the Material Culture Program is once again sponsoring three undergraduate summer service learners. Each student has partnered with a Wisconsin museum or historical society to help them digitize and share their collections online. Our second update comes from Landscape Architecture major Katey Smith.

“How is the kid? Suppose you are having a great old time, wish Kate & kids and I were with you. Well don’t forget us will you?” This message was written on the back of this postcard (below) and was sent to Mr. Leonard Brite of Milwaukee, Wisconsin on September 10^th, 1917 . The postcard has been a way of connecting with loved ones, sharing memories, and sending many “wish you were here” messages since the early 1900s. I have had the opportunity to decipher these hand-written personal messages and am looking forward to sharing this collection.

Over the past two months I have been working with the Middleton Area Historical Society to digitize a portion of their historical photograph collection for the Wisconsin Heritage Online database. I have always had an interest in photography and I have recently completed the landscape architecture program at UW-Madison. I am interested in many topics that this broad major encompasses and this summer I wanted to gain more experience with Historic and Cultural Landscape Preservation. This internship allows me to gain hands-on experience, while blending my love of photography and historic landscapes.

Starting out I had absolutely no idea what type of historical photographs I would be digitizing and researching for the digitization project. Wisconsin Heritage Online Outreach Specialist Emily Pfotenhauer advised me with a few logical ways to start:  1. Find a topic that interested me or related to landscape architecture 2. Narrow down the photograph search to a street or area within Middleton or 3. Focus on a topic important to Middleton’s history.

All of these approaches proved to be difficult for me and I was really starting to envy the Material Culture interns who already had a project started or designed for them. I felt pretty lost and for a few weeks I just focused on helping the other volunteers scan photographs and enter information into a data storage system. Luckily, this helped me become familiar with the Middleton Area Historical Society’s collection and what type of information was important to the citizens who visited the museum. By listening to visitor’s conversations with the museum docents, and constantly hearing “Oh I remember my grandfather having…” and trying to help them when they asked for yearbooks, family photographs, etc. made me realize that people were searching for that special way that they could connect with Middleton’s vivid history.

When I came across the large collection of postcards I was totally captivated by them. I liked deciphering the personal messages on the back and felt like I was peering into a small slice of life in the early 1900’s. Often times, the messages on the postcards are very similar to things that I would write on a postcard to a family member or friend today. I felt very connected to history at that point in this experience which made me realize – I too was searching for that unique connection!

As I kept searching through the postcard collection, I discovered some really high quality images. I personally love the image above of the Weinberg Building (currently housing the restaurant Villa Dolce) because it shows an active street life, thriving businesses, and a great social atmosphere. I also especially like images that have old automobiles or signs in them like the two below. (Parmenter Street and High School).

So far, my time with the Middleton Area Historical Society has been very fun! I enjoy finding something new each day, whether it’s a really old photograph or an interesting piece of information. The knowledge and hands on experience I have been gaining is very beneficial. I want to thank Mike Davis (City Administrator), Brekk Feely, Carol and Dave (Lead Volunteers at the Society), as well as all the other Society volunteers who have been extremely trusting and accommodating throughout this entire experience. 

--Katey Smith

Service Learning Update: Maddie Hagerman, UW-Madison Anthropology Collections

With support from the Caxambas Foundation, the Material Culture Program is once again sponsoring three undergraduate summer service learners. Each student has partnered with a Wisconsin museum or historical society to help them digitize and share their collections online. Our first update comes from Anthropology major Maddie Hagerman.

For my Summer Service Learning internship, I’m continuing my student job in the Anthropology Collections at UW-Madison. I work with Senior Curator Danielle Benden as a collections assistant with the ethnographic artifacts. The first part of my project entails making mounts for the nearly six hundred ethnographic artifacts in the collection. In the second phase I began the process of publishing the ethnographic artifacts to UW Digital Collections to better attract potential researchers.

The ethnographic collection contains artifacts from around the world amassed in the field by UW graduate students and professors. Because many of them are composed of organic materials, the artifacts ideally should be stored in closed archival boxes. When I began, most of the artifacts were kept in open shelving, simply protected by tissue paper. To provide the artifacts with the optimal protection, I mounted them on either “blue board,” an archival cardboard, or carved individual ethafoam supports. I designed this basket mount to stabilize both the bottom and sides of the basket. The archival linen “twill tape” only applies pressure on the foam rather than the fragile basket.

The digitization process is more involved than I could have imagined. Right now I’m photographing each object with a Nikon D300 camera and a professional lighting system. Before I could start to photograph, I created a unique nomenclature for our collection. A nomenclature consists of a standardized set of terms to describe objects. This helps to make the artifacts more easily searchable within the digital collections database. In August I will continue to photograph artifacts. I also have to check over the metadata (information such as time, place, and materials) for each artifact to make sure it is correct.  

I'm thoroughly enjoying my summer internship. My favorite part is designing mounts. It really pushes me to think critically about protecting objects while still conserving paper and other supplies. The digitization process has challenged me to work with data entry rather than physical objects. I hope to be a collections manager some day so building off my coursework in material culture, anthropology, and history to learn digital aspects of collections management will be very useful in the future!

--Maddie Hagerman

Job Opportunity: University of Maine Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Humanities

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the University of Maine Humanities Initiative seek a Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Humanities for a one-year position (with the possibility of two additional years). 

The Fellow will work closely with the administration of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the advisory board of the UMaine Humanities Initiative to develop research topics, courses, and workshops pertinent to one or more of the University’s humanities units (Art History, English, Franco American Studies, History, Modern Languages and Classics, Native American Studies, and Philosophy) and/or humanities programs (Canadian-American Center, Maine Folklife Center, and National Poetry Foundation).

In addition, working in partnership with the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Assessment, the Fellow will help orient UMaine faculty, staff, and students to Digital Humanities research, pedagogy, and learning. For a full job description and application instructions please visit:http://jobs.umaine.edu.

Job Opportunity: Nordic Heritage Museum Interim Registrar

Nordic Heritage Museum Interim Registrar

Responsible for the accurate and timely registration and documentation of donations to Museum collections and temporary loans. Support the Curator of Collections in performing all aspects of collection management.

Essential Job Functions: 

-Complete necessary documentation associated with acquisitions, loans, and temporary exhibitions, including deeds of gift, loan agreements, contracts, insurance, and condition and facilities reports. 

-Oversee administration of PastPerfect, the collections management database system, including establishing standards for data entry and performing data clean-up.

-Supervise volunteers and interns who assist with collections and collection management tasks.

-Oversee collections photography as well as rights and reproduction.

-Participate in the review of objects offered to the museum’s collection, and administer the acceptance or decline of such objects.

-Enhance the interpretation of collections objects exhibited in permanent and temporary exhibitions in partnership with the Chief Curator, Curator of Collections, and Exhibitions Coordinator.

-Assist with public access and utilization of the collections for research by responding to inquiries in partnership with the Chief Curator, Curator of Collections, and Tracie Library Archivist.

-Write and administer loan agreement forms, insurance, condition and facility reports, and shipping for incoming and outgoing loans.

-Maintain supplies and materials related to the collections.

Skills/Abilities:

-Ability to balance multiple projects and prioritize tasks.

-Highly organized and detail focused.

-Ability to take initiative and ask questions.

-Strong communication and interpersonal skills.

-Ability to work independently and in a team setting.

Conference: "Postwar Architecture and the Diplomacy of Furniture" for the Society of Architectural Historians Annual Conference

SAH, Buffalo, April 10 - 14, 2013
Deadline: Jun 1, 2012
Postwar Architecture and the Diplomacy of Furniture

Consumer goods, especially furniture, were an important means of  expressing America’s political and socio-economical strength in the postwar decades. Modern design was used to demonstrate the country’s high standard of living and became a signboard of the ‘American way of life.’ The companies who produced this appealing furniture employed
clever export strategies and convincing advertisements; their modern furniture quickly became a staple of office interiors and the homes of the progressive upper-middle class in many parts of the world.

Most studies within this field have focused on the ambitions and strategies of company directors, the architects and designers who created their products, and the graphic design professionals who made these objects so desirable. A thorough understanding of the systems through which their products were promoted and received outside, and to some degree, inside the United States is still lacking. To further explore the role furniture played in selling a political message worldwide and in strengthening the political representation of modern architecture, this session seeks papers that examine the distribution, consumption, and reception of modern furniture between 1945 and c.1960.

Papers may examine highly visible firms as Knoll International or lesser known manufacturers and distributors of modern furniture. We are especially interested in the way their products informed or manipulated ‘local’ furniture production and the visual representation of modern architecture. Other topics might include, but are not limited to, the representation of furniture brands in architecture journals; the role played by modern furniture in foreign diplomatic facilities; the mediation of imported design through exhibitions and showrooms; the role played by modern furniture in Cold War politics; collaborations between design multinationals, local furniture producers and architects/designers; furniture design as a conduit of international exchange.

Case studies on individual contributions are welcome, provided they address the larger session theme. Session chairs: Fredie Floré, Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, VU University Amsterdam/Ghent University, fredie.flore@ugent.be; and Cammie McAtee, Harvard University; cammie.mcatee@gmail.com.

DS 501 Special Topics: Design Solutions to Contemporary (Sustainability) Issues. AKA “I Want to Change the World”

Meets MTWR evenings, 5:30-8:00 June 25-July 19 (3 credits) 2335 Sterling
Instructor: Professor Beverly Gordon

In an intensely concentrated but exciting month, we will examine developments in the design field that focus on creating solutions to contemporary cultural and environmental problems (e.g., overwhelming waste, toxicity, inequities from globalization). Twenty-first century designers are emerging as visionaries for the future; they are working to solve everyday sustainability issues, not just for the developed world, but for “the other 90%.” New “design thinking” is seeking to effect “massive change” in the way people do things, from making buildings and interior furnishings to generating and transporting light, conceiving of and manufacturing clothing, cleaning water, preventing theft, etc. The class will explore today’s pressing issues and examine ways that designers and engineers working from a variety of starting points (industrial/product design, textile design, architecture and interior design, landscape, virtual reality) are articulating problems, working together, and creatively reimagining cradle-to-cradle solutions.


Through films and videos, lectures, guest speakers,discussions, class exercises and student investigation, we will focus on what McDonough and Braungart call “The Next Industrial Revolution” (i.e., upcycling and truly green design), considering overarching concepts such as biomimicry, leapfrogging and emotionally sustainable design. We will build a holistic model of sustainable fashion; look at new approaches to materials; and study specific design solutions such as self-sustaining houses or “Earthships;” light-emitting and energy-harvesting fabrics; the cityscapes and “new neighborhoods” conceptualized by Bjorke Ingals; “bright green city” visions coming from places such as Bogota; the Yves Behar studio which developed solutions ranging from “One Laptop per Child” to self-designed eyeglass frames; and third world problem solvers such as solar ovens and rolling water carriers.


The class is open to any interested student—upper level undergrad or grad—in any major. It is suitable for artists, designers in all fields, engineers, environmentalists, city planners, entrepreneurs, or anyone concerned with a sustainable future. It is not a studio class, but studio solutions/thinking are integral and welcome, and problem solving and hands-on exercises are incorporated. The class is intended to introduce the breadth, depth and creativity of contemporary “design thinking” and give participants a sense of hope, understanding and inspiration about the ways actual interventions may be made.