Welcome to my blogspot where I am going to record and share all information about the adventures that I am going to have during the Spring 2014 semester as a student in ANTH 177 - Museum Methods.

Thursday, February 13, 2014

At class last Tuesday, Carrie had talked about the Beardsley Collection and one of the pieces she is still looking for is a notebook of information that George Beardsley had written about the San Francisco Panama Pacific Exhibition that took place in 1915.  When I was looking online for information about the Exhibition I cam across a website that has a lot of information about the event.  Actually it was an extravaganza.  Here is the link: http://www.sanfranciscomemories.com/ppie/
There is a page that shows a variety of the souvenirs from the exhibition.  Do you think that any of the items in the CSUS Beardsley Collection were souvenirs from that exhibition?  I have one obscure object in my group that is pocket mirror with an advertisement of Heald Business College.  I wonder if they picked it up at the Pan Pacific Exhibition?  Just a thought.  Pocket mirrors were used as a means for advertisement at the turn of the century so it could have been picked up anywhere I suppose.  But it is sure romantic to think that it came from the Panama Pacific Exhibition.  I wonder if it is mentioned in that missing notebook.

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2 comments:

  1. Museum AnthropologistFebruary 13, 2014 at 8:25 PM

    I love your thought that the mirror might have come from the exhibition. We know where the book was deaccessioned to (now). I found it a couple years ago listed on Google Books (though not digitized), as in the possession of the California Historical Society. We went to look at it (not yet realizing it was deaccessioned from our very own Beardsley Collection. I finally (after examining it--and it is a wonderful hand-illustrated work that reveals his scientific and technical mind) asked the archivist if she could reveal the donor as we were wondering if he had family who might have given it to them (and whom we might contact). She came back with a letter of donation from my predecessor. He never recorded that he had deaccessioned it. We are still looking for an album he de-accessioned to somewhere (!) that was photos from Pompeii and other locales. My predecessor passed away several years ago, so I cannot ask him what institution he offered it to. I need to make sure it didn't end up the University Archives (although that would be wonderful). I wish these critical documents and albums were all intact and at Sac State. It makes no sense to me that they were deaccessioned.

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  2. CarrieFebruary 14, 2014 at 11:57 AM

    Yes, the fact that so much was deaccessioned is a real point of frustration and sadness for me. We have lost so much context and knowledge. Nancy, I have a few photographs of the notebook that is now at the California Historical Society. I'll post them to my blog ASAP. There is a reference to GFB's interest in the expo in one of his obituaries, which I will also post. The expo appears to have been of great interest to him. I would think that he would have picked up some memento from it, but it is so hard to know what it was -- I'm also sure that we did not get his full collection. There may be items that the family still has or that have been lost to time.

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