Phase 6: Developing Storage Space and Housing Significant Humanities Collections
FAIN: PG-271390-20
Good Will-Hinckley (Hinckley, ME 04944-0159)
Deborah W. Staber (Project Director: December 2019 to January 2023)
The purchase of preservation furniture and supplies and the hiring of a consultant to offer training in collections care in partnership with Maine Archives and Museums for regional museum staff. The L.C. Bates Museum cares for a collection of artworks and artifacts related to the daily life of children living in Good Will-Hinckley Homes, childcare centers and orphanages that operated in Maine in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The collections include farming and ice-cutting tools used by the boys, and fabric arts and rug-making equipment used by the girls, which help to show the work skills taught to those under the care of the Good Will centers. The collections are used for research, exhibits, and educational programs on the history of childcare and orphan life.
The L.C. Bates Museum’s project goal is to improve collection’s care and preservation by completing phase 6 of Developing Storage Spaces and Housing Significant Historic Objects in the museum’s 2 floor storage space. The stored collections are relevant to the national history of childcare and its study as exemplified by Good Will-Hinckley Homes (GWH) and/or Maine history. This storage project, a prioritized collections care goal of the Museum’s 2018-22 Strategic Plan, follows the recommendations of our 2008 RE-CAP, 2012 MAP Collections Stewardship and Ron Harvey’s 2000 Collection Survey and 2010-19 climate monitoring reports. The project is designed to turn an unused space on the second floor into an appropriate and used long-term storage space for humanities objects and provide collections care training through working with the conservator and a preservation workshop presented in colaboration with Maine archives and Museums by the project conservator Ron Harvey.