Rehousing the Western North Carolina Humanities Collection

FAIN: PG-280789-21

Smith Mcdowell House Museum (Asheville, NC 28801-4817)
Caragh Koon (Project Director: January 2021 to September 2023)

Purchase of storage furniture to coincide with the installation of an HVAC system and relocation of collection materials to a space in which the environment would be monitored. These improvements were recommended in a 2020 Collection Assessment for Preservation for the Western North Carolina collection, which includes a dozen ancient artifacts, eighteenth- through twentieth-century household furnishings, arms, agricultural tools, archival records, rare books, musical instruments, photographs, textiles, films, and recordings. The wide-ranging collection is primarily used for interpretation in public outreach via exhibits within the historic house museum and tours of it, which highlight the stories of underrepresented groups in history by focusing on one identifiable enslaved woman who worked in the kitchen, as well as the lives of those interred in the oldest public African-American burial ground in the region. 

The Western North Carolina Historical Association is headquartered in a historic home built c1840. Our collection, when not on display, has been stored in an attic space without climate control for over a decade. In early 2021, we will install an HVAC system in the house. This will enable us to relocate our storage room to a new climate-controlled space on the second floor. This space will be monitored for pests, pollutants, and light as well as for temperature and humidity. We are requesting funds to purchase museum-quality shelving for the new storage room as well as museum-quality boxes. Once the shelving is installed in the new storage space, we will remove each item from its old box in the attic, clean and label the items as needed, and rehouse each item in new archival boxes. The new boxes will then be relocated to the climate-controlled storage room and placed on the new shelving to ensure the preservation of our significant humanities collections far into the future.