FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Museum Cataloging Project Unveils New Treasures
Valdez, Alaska, October 22, 2019 – The Valdez Museum on Hazelet with its Remembering Old Valdez Exhibit is closed for the season, but there’s a buzz of activity inside the sprawling warehouse building. Nearly every inch of floor space is covered with artifacts, large and small, hauled down from storage on the mezzanine. They may look old and dusty, but for Collections Intern Megan Murray each one is an unsolved mystery to unravel, such as the early 1900’s Craps table she cleaned up and restored to its former glory:
“I have to become knowledgeable in many areas in order to catalog correctly–for instance reading up on the rules of craps betting. It’s like a treasure hunt every day.”
Megan’s first thought on the undertaking reflects her enthusiasm:
“This is great, so much stuff and so much to choose from to catalog!”
Favorite items are ones that contain clues, like the 1915 DuPont Company tin powder keg used by the Copper River Northwestern Railroad. It was covered with writing underneath the rust which she tried to decipher in order to learn more about the DuPont Company. Other discoveries include: a 1940’s dress form, owned by Mary Welch, possibly the first registered nurse in Alaska, who used it to make her uniforms; a vintage Burlington white wicker “Baskenette” bassinet, a tile-top garden table circa 1930 and a steamer trunk belonging to Valdez resident Arthur Segerquist (1893-1950).
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The 8-week scope of the fall Collections Internship is made possible through a grant from Museums Alaska, and work by VMHA staff on the Cataloguing Project will extend through the winter and early spring.
New Addition to VMHA Art Collection
Valdez, Alaska, October 23, 2019 – In early October 2019, the Valdez Museum & Historical Archive received a major new addition to its collection: a beautiful 1905 oil painting of the growing town of Valdez as seen from the water, painted by James Everett Stuart. The painting is significant not only for its age and aesthetic value, but also because it may shed new light on the draw of Valdez for early 20th-century artists.
The Valdez Museum was approached some months prior by Anchorage resident Gilliam Smythe, about including the painting, Chugach Mountains and Valdez Glacier, as a bequest. Smythe, an art collector, purchased it from a New York gallery in 1984, and after careful consideration she generously chose to donate the painting to the Museum outright.
Stuart’s painting shows an atmospheric view of Valdez at a time when the Valdez Glacier came nearly straight up to the waterline, dwarfing the small wooden buildings clustered at its base. The three baidarkas cruising the waters in the foreground are clearly of native Alutiiq design, evidenced by their telltale two-pronged bow. The baidarkas’ three-man configuration was developed after Russian colonization, when a Russian crewman was accompanied by Alutiiq hunters during the sea otter pelt trade.
The artist, James Everett Stuart, grandson of famous portraitist Gilbert Stuart, was a landscape painter active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century who concentrated his attention on mountainous regions of the Pacific Northwest, California, and Alaska. Stuart first came to Alaska in 1891 and made three subsequent trips from 1893 to 1903. Stuart’s sojourn to Valdez during that period makes him a contemporary of two other celebrated artists who made Valdez their home, Sydney Laurence and Eustace Paul Ziegler. These artists and others of their generation did much to form the popular image of Alaska, their visualizations of the territory’s pristine wilderness and robust residents becoming part of the Alaskan mythos.