American Art History Digitally

sponsored by the Terra Foundation for American Art

A Measure of Success: An African American Photograph Album from Turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century ConnecticutProject Narrative

Scholarly Article|Interactive Feature|Conservation|Project Narrative

Acknowledgments

Often words of thanks are reserved for the end of a project narrative, but I want to begin with them by acknowledging the huge debt I owe Carey Gibbons, digital art history editor for Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide (NCAW), and Robyn Roslak, NCAW’s copyeditor. Carey sacrificed time for her research and sleep to keep me and the project going, offering excellent advice and encouragement at many stages. Robyn ensured clarity and consistency across the project, not an easy task with so many of its parts in production simultaneously. I am very grateful to both Carey and Robyn. This project is so much better as a result of their dedication.

The photograph album of Allston family and other portraits, held by the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) and containing thirty portraits and one memorial card dating from the 1880s to about 1910, is the inspiration for this project. I owe thanks to Wanda Corn, who generously donated the album to the museum in 2009 on behalf of the family of Rev. Keith M. Jones in honor of Lonnie Bunch, inaugural director of the NMAAHC and now secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Rev. Jones, now deceased, is Dr. Corn’s father. He was a friend of Lonnie, who is quite fond of this album and thrilled about this digital project. I also want to thank the Jones family for their generosity.

Conservation of the album received federal support from the Smithsonian Collections Care Initiative, administered by the Smithsonian National Collections Program, which Bill Tompkins directs with the steadfast support of Amelia Kile, collections program specialist. Antje Neumann, head conservator at the NMAAHC, wrote the comprehensive proposal that secured funding for preservation of the album. The video about the album was supported by the NMAAHC with the blessing of Michelle Commander, the museum’s deputy director. The publication of this digital art history project in NCAW was made possible by the generous support of the Terra Foundation for American Art. Throughout the project, my supervisor, Michèle Gates Moresi, assistant director for collections, enthusiastically encouraged me to make the most of this opportunity to contribute to NCAW.

The many other people who also contributed to the project are gratefully acknowledged below.

The Origin of the Project

The origin of this digital art history project stretches back more than a decade, to my discovery of the photograph album of Allston family and other portraits in storage at the NMAAHC. I cannot recall the exact date of the discovery, but I do remember how I felt: I was completely captivated by what I saw. The album depicts, in part, an African American community in Connecticut around the turn of the twentieth century. Although I knew nothing about this community, it appeared to be located not far from the town where I grew up. As I looked through this incredible album, I was inspired by photographs of adorable babies in long white gowns, women in stylish ensembles, and men in natty jackets and ties. I knew then that I wanted to do some sort of project related to the album, but this was at a time before the NMAAHC opened to the public in 2016, and there was no time then for me to pursue it. The album was also falling apart. Although the photographs were in good condition, the poor condition of the album itself made it difficult to safely handle and view the photographs. By the time the album was ready to be catalogued in 2016, the photographs had been temporarily removed and digitized, making it possible for Katie Knowles, cataloguer at the NMAAHC, and others to conduct research on the photographs without causing them harm or further damaging the album.

In 2017, I began work on the book Pictures with Purpose: Early Photographs from the National Museum of African American History and Culture (2019), the seventh volume in the NMAAHC Double Exposure series, for which I am a coeditor with Michèle. Michèle and I cowrote an essay for Pictures with Purpose about the social uses of early photographs of African Americans. In the section of the volume about preserving memories, we included a double-page spread with photographs of Rev. G. H. S. Bell and Mrs. Susan Bell from the photograph album of Allston family and other portraits.‍[1] By that time, we knew that the glass-plate negatives for the portraits of Rev. and Mrs. Bell were at the Library of Congress, which allowed us to identify both of them in the album. Additionally, Katie, our album cataloguer; the NMAAHC’s Collection Information Specialist Emily Houf; and I had found biographical information about Ida Allston, whose name is written on the back of one photograph in the album, and her sister, Sarah Allston, whose married name, Sarah Robinson, was written on the back of another photograph.

In 2018, I was invited to contribute a short essay related to art during the “long” nineteenth century for Making Waves: Crosscurrents in the Study of Nineteenth-Century Art (2019), a festschrift in honor of Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, which led to more research and writing about the album.‍[2] For their crucial assistance in getting a draft of my “Windows and Touchstones: A Photograph Album from Connecticut, 1890–1910” in shape and published in Making Waves, I want to thank Tanya Sheehan, Ellerton M. and Edith K. Jetté Professor of Art and chair of the Humanities Division at Colby College; and Laurinda Dixon, coeditor of the festschrift and formerly the William F. Tolley Distinguished Professor of Teaching in the Humanities at Syracuse University.‍[3] During my work on Pictures with Purpose and “Windows and Touchstones” I had the full support of my supervisors, Rex Ellis and Dwandalyn Reece, both associate directors for curatorial affairs at the NMAAHC.

The Course of the Project

Petra and Isabel Taube, comanaging editors for NCAW, found “Windows and Touchstones” interesting and invited me to submit a proposal for a digital art history project about the album for the journal, which I did in the summer of 2023. The proposal was accepted after refinement by Petra, Isabel, Carey, and Kim Orcutt, the journal’s executive director. Throughout the project, all four editors provided excellent direction.

The invitation to publish a digital art history project about this photograph album was timely. I had more research on the album I wanted to share and new ideas I wanted to explore, but I thought it would be difficult to share them effectively in a traditional publication format. I had found much of the work published about photograph albums, including mine, to be frustrating for two reasons. First, most publications are limited in the number of illustrations they can feature; usually, only a small fraction of the photographs from an album are able to be published at a given time, making it impossible to get a complete idea of what the album in full looks like. Second, it is difficult when descriptions and illustrations appear in a static format to provide a sense of a photograph album as a whole and how its parts—cover, title page, album pages, photographs, and ephemera—work together. A project featuring a digital, interactive album provides an innovative and engaging means of overcoming the limitations of conventional publications.

Thanks to the creative work of Allan McLeod, NCAW’s website developer, not only does the interactive feature of this project present the album as a whole and allow viewers to browse it dynamically page by page, but it also allows readers to “pull out” and “turn over” each photograph and piece of ephemera. In addition, Allan came up with a novel, user-friendly format with two tabs for each portrait or other component that provide more information about the album’s contents. One tab leads to a catalogue record, representing hours of cataloguing work by Katie and, especially, by Emily. The other tab leads to Lives, narratives that provide information about people related to the album—the sitters and their families, photographers, photography-studio owners, and the album’s producer and seller—along with other details. Much of the content for Lives is drawn from the project’s article; the remainder is intended to enhance the experience of curious readers as they browse the album. An Appendix and Family Tree, designed by James McBennett, were also included to provide further information about the photography studios responsible for the photos in the album and the families featured in the album. Allan, Carey, and I decided that the readers’ experience with the interactive feature should be informative and cohesive, regardless of whether someone has read the article first or at all.

Of course, like the album itself, the whole of this project is meant to add up to more than simply the sum of its parts. While each component explores the album from a different perspective and can stand on its own, the impact is more powerful and enlightening when the parts are considered in relationship to one another. Everyone who worked on the project hopes many people will choose to read and enjoy it in its entirety.

I was fortunate to have two very thoughtful anonymous peer reviewers who read the first draft of the project’s article, reviewed my mock-up of the interactive feature, and then invested substantial time providing copious, well-informed, and constructive criticism. I might have found their input a bit disheartening had it not been balanced by their sincere enthusiasm for the project and by Carey’s support. These reviewers and Carey helped me hone my ideas, tighten my focus, and reorganize the article. I hope my gratitude shows in the way I implemented their advice. At a later stage, Angela Winand, administrator for the Center for Digitization and Curation of African American History at the NMAAHC, also read the manuscript and provided helpful comments.

When the article was nearly complete and work on the interactive feature was underway, Carey and I became concerned that the album, as a material thing, might be lost in the digital magic of the interactive feature, yet the article did not seem to be the right place to address this issue. Together, we decided to invite Mirasol Estrada, photograph conservator at the NMAAHC, to write about the album’s physical aspects, the photographic processes represented therein, and the collaborative work of conserving the album. As the topic of her essay expanded and the time available to complete the work contracted, she graciously welcomed me as coauthor. Mirasol, who joined the museum about a year ago, has a demanding position, and I want to thank her for making time to work on this project. We relied heavily on her broad and deep expertise, which also improved the cataloguing of the album’s photographs. Antje, Mirasol’s supervisor, also deserves thanks for supporting Mirasol’s contributions, which include not only the conservation essay but also many hours spent examining and studying the photographs.

I am also grateful to the conservators at the New England Document Conservation Center (NEDCC), including Monique Fischer, senior photograph conservator, and Jessica Henze, senior book conservator, who collaborated with Mirasol on a treatment plan for the album and performed the work. Jessica also provided crucial details about the work at the NEDCC for the conservation essay.

While collaboration among conservators and other museum staff is well known in the museum field, Mirasol, Carey, and I believed we could make a wider audience aware of this fact in an engaging way with a video. Leah L. Jones, head photographer at the NMAAHC and a video journalist, produced the video. Mirasol and I collaborated with Leah to create the storyboard and script, but we counted on Leah to design the set and shoot and edit the video. Leah has been a beloved colleague for many years. She recently started a new position at the museum which keeps her very busy, yet she worked many extra hours to make this video a reality. We were very pleased that Henze, who treated the album, was able to work with us remotely on the script and later come to Washington, DC, to appear in the video. Daria Wingreen, branch librarian at the Smithsonian Libraries, graciously allowed us to use a space in one of the libraries for our studio.

The last person I want to thank is Douglas Robertson, my husband, who made sure I ate well and who took on far more than his fair share of household chores when I was in the throes of this project, which lasted much longer than either of us had anticipated. He is also my biggest fan and best friend, who listened to me as I talked endlessly about my research and writing. I am sure he is just as thrilled as Carey and I are that the project is complete and has turned out well.

Digital art history projects take longer and are more complex than traditional scholarly art history articles because they typically include both an article and at least one interactive digital component. Interactive features often need to be created from scratch, or, if they can be repurposed from other projects, they need to be modified to work the way the author intends. The process and format require a highly collaborative approach, along with much guidance and support for authors. My collaborators were extraordinary. I am so fortunate and honored that my first digital art history venture was completed with the help of the amazing team at NCAW, a pioneer in digital publishing and one of the most highly regarded publications in the field of art history.