Hidden History, Part 2: Joy McLean Bosfield Sings at Kennedy Center Dedication

 By Jennifer Sieck

Joy McLean Bosfield framed this page from the score for “Gloria in Excelsis” signed for her by MASS composer Leonard Bernstein. She sang in the choir for MASS’s world premiere, conducted by Bernstein for the Kennedy Center’s dedication in 1971. Joy McLean Bosfield papers, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution, gift of Joy McLean Bosfield.

"Gloria in Excelsis" proclaims the title of this autographed musical score in prelude to the story of Joy McLean Bosfield (1924-1999), a musician, educator, and entrepreneur who lived in Washington, DC from 1962 to 1985. Like another accomplished African American musician in the District featured in a prior post on this blog, McLean Bosfield was instrumental in bringing the Kennedy Center into being. Her contribution took the form of singing in Leonard Bernstein’s MASS: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers at the Kennedy Center’s dedication on September 8, 1971. Commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in memory of her husband, President John F. Kennedy, Bernstein riffed on the traditional Latin mass to honor the nation’s first Roman Catholic president in an operatic piece featuring more than 200 performers and choreography by Alvin Ailey. The Kennedy Center’s 50th Anniversary Season concludes with a new interpretation of MASS in September 2022.

Original Production of Leonard Bernstein’s MASS, 1971. Photo by Fletcher Drake. Courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Center Archives, 1971. Joy McLean Bosfield might be among the robed choir members above the dais, possibly the second singer in the first row to the right of the center aisle. The photo ran on the front page of The Washington Post on September 9, 1971.

The framed sheet music might have been especially meaningful for McLean Bosfield, as she had co-founded a business that prepared printed music for publication in 1959. This excerpt from “Gloria in Excelsis” shows the choral and orchestral parts for an exuberant response to the absolution of sin. Across the opening bars, Bernstein inscribed in red ink, “Gloria to Joy McClean!” [sic] along with his signature and the date. Significantly, it is the only framed item among the newspaper clippings (including Washington Post articles about MASS at the Kennedy Center), photographs, and programs in the Joy McLean Bosfield papers at the Anacostia Community Museum.

A photo from Joy McLean Bosfield’s scrapbook shows the cast of Porgy and Bess in Hollywood in 1954: left to right, unidentified man, Irene Williams, Leslie Scott, Joy McLean, LeVern Hutcherson. Courtesy of The Joy McLean Bosfield papers, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution, gift of Joy McLean Bosfield.

“Joy McLean” appears among the names in the MASS program along with other renowned artists, such as Alvin Ailey dancers Judith Jamison and Sylvia Waters. The name served as both her real and stage name for much of her career, including when she sang the role of Clara in an international touring production of Porgy and Bess that played a significant role in Cold War cultural diplomacy in the 1950s. 

Norman Scribner wrote a letter to the original MASS cast members on Kennedy Center letterhead, Feb. 16, 1972. Courtesy of The Joy McLean Bosfield papers, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution, gift of Joy McLean Bosfield.

McLean Bosfield’s papers also include a letter from Washington Choral Arts and MASS choir director Norman Scribner. Its salutation reads, “Dear ‘Original Cast’ Member,” and invites her to participate in a 1972 touring revival of MASS. Professional obligations likely prevented her from participating, such as her service as music minister for John Wesley AME Zion Church in the District’s Logan Circle. A church colleague, Rev. John R. Kinard, became the founding director of the Anacostia Neighborhood Museum in 1967. Recognizing the value of her papers, he worked with Senior Curator Portia James to acquire them for the museum’s collection as McLean Bosfield prepared to retire to Mexico in 1985.

Annotated scrapbook photos show Joy McLean Bosfield teaching her choreography to youth in rehearsals for the Community League of West 159th Street’s Cotillion in New York City, 1958. Courtesy of The Joy McLean Bosfield papers, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution, gift of Joy McLean Bosfield.

Born and raised in New Jersey, McLean Bosfield came of age artistically in New York City. Like Bernstein, she performed and conducted at Lincoln Center. Her scrapbooks attest to a wide-ranging repertoire rooted in African American musical traditions, including those of her mother’s birthplace of Demarara, British Guiana (Guyana, in 2022), alongside fluency in mélodie (French art song), classical compositions, and Broadway showtunes.

A verse on a handmade card congratulating McLean Bosfield on her college acceptance concludes with the double entendre, “Let Joy Be Unconfined.” Her archive and students bear witness to a legacy of unconfined Joy.

In harmony with this post and in honor of Black History Month, McLean Bosfield’s scrapbooks are being relaunched on the Smithsonian Transcription Center. Digital volunteers can refine prior transcriptions, which proved challenging due to the scrapbooks’ varied and fragile materials. Check out the scrapbooks: here and here.

Jennifer Sieck, Ph.D., Collections Researcher

Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum

DAWN V. ROGALA'S CIRCUS PHOTOGRAPHS: A SMITHSONIAN COLLABORATION

By David Haberstich

October is American Archives Month! I’m celebrating it with this backstory and update to an SI Collections Blog post by former Smith College intern Kira Leinwand, published in late 2019. Kira’s insightful post, emphasizing the cultural dimensions of circus traditions, enthusiastically described some of the fascinating photographs in the NMAH Archives Center’s Dawn V. Rogala Circus Photographs and Papers, also the subject of a book entitled When the Circus Came to Town! An American Tradition in Photographs (Photographs by Dawn V. Rogala; Essays by Dawn V. Rogala,  David E. Haberstich, and Shannon T. Perich). Dr. Rogala, now a paintings conservator at the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute (MCI), was an amateur photojournalist during the years of her self-assigned circus project. See Kira’s article, "The Traditional, International American Circus."

On October 24 this book was awarded the 2021 Stuart Thayer Prize by the Circus Historical Society, so this is a fitting stimulus to update the story of the collection and the book. Don Covington, president of the society, wrote in an email announcing the award, “The award is presented annually by the Circus Historical Society in recognition of superior documentation of circus history. Your book, ‘When the Circus Came to Town,’ was deemed by the selection committee to be the top entry in a crowded field of competitors.”

Early on, Ginger Minkiewicz of the Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press expressed interest in publishing a book on Dr. Rogala’s circus photographs. At the same time Dawn was concerned about preserving her photographs from this multi-year project in a suitable repository, and engaged in discussions with Shannon Perich of the NMAH Photographic History in the Division of Work and Industry and myself in the NMAH Archives Center. We both wanted Dawn’s photographs! We easily reached an appropriate compromise. Dawn donated her original negatives, work prints, and related papers from her circus project to the Archives Center, but also prepared a new portfolio of 16” x 20” exhibition-quality prints as a gift to the Photographic History Collection, giving new life to the documentary photographs she had created decades earlier.

Dawn was available to consult on the arrangement of her archive, although it was already in a logical, meaningful order when she delivered it to the Archives Center. I emphasize her role as a congenial consultant, as I know archivists and curators with cautionary tales about allowing donors to “curate” their own collections! Dawn worked with me and Kira Leinwand, answering questions, offering suggestions, and explaining how her working methods as a photographer had informed her decisions about arrangement. Processing was completed by Alison Oswald.

Dawn, Shannon, and I simultaneously embarked on a related collaboration, the creation of the lavishly illustrated scholarly book mentioned above, for which we all wrote essays. Dawn recounted her fascinating experiences in photographing a dozen small traveling circuses over a seven-year period, “embedded” with her subjects in much the same sense that war photographers are said to be embedded with the troops they follow and photograph. Shannon wrote about Dawn’s photographs within the historical context of circus, carnival, and entertainment photographs. As Dawn’s images concentrated on circus people and their behind-the-scenes work and relationships, rather than the spectacle of circus performances as entertainment, I chose to write about her images within the context of “work” photography and its history. Her pictures vividly depict the muscle work of practice and rehearsals, of erecting and dismantling tents, training animals, and the myriad efforts of performers and other workers to create a spectacle for audiences. I also contributed a preliminary finding for the archival collection and other reference material to an appendix in the book. All three of us reviewed each other’s texts, trying to meld them into a cohesive, informative, and entertaining volume. To me, our most rewarding collaboration was the selection, sequencing, and layout of the photographs to be reproduced in the book, conducted by all three of us in several long sessions in conference rooms with large tables. We seemed to be of a single mind, with no significant disagreements.

"Kiss, Carson & Barnes Circus, 1995," by Dawn V. Rogala. Copyright © Dawn V. Rogala. Reproduced with permission. Gelatin silver print, Photographic History Collection, National Museum of American History. 

Ephemera from the Archives Center's Rogala Collection: Route Cards for Kelly Miller Circus and Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus, 1995.

This archival collection contains a rich trove of information beyond the pictorial documentation, including interviews with circus performers and personnel, memorabilia and colorful ephemera, rare publications, travel itineraries, and related documents. One senses the end of an era, as most of the circuses which Dawn lovingly photographed no longer exist, literally having folded up their tents for the last time.

Our book serves as an extension of Dawn’s circus archive, as it contains her biographical commentary, observations, and fond reminiscences of her travels with the circuses. As a paintings conservator at the Smithsonian’s MCI, she employs the keen analytical eyes she developed as a documentary photographer. She also has to her credit a number of scholarly and scientific books and other publications in her field.

Now here’s the shameless plug: our book, When the Circus Came to Town! An American Tradition in Photographs / Photographs by Dawn V. Rogala, Essays by Dawn V. Rogala, David E. Haberstich, and Shannon T. Perich, is available from the usual sources, and would make a great Christmas/holiday gift!   

David Haberstich, Curator of Photography, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

From March to Marketing: The Changing Face of Pride

By Franklin A. Robinson, Jr.

The Stonewall uprising of 1969 was triggered by a New York Police Department (NYPD) raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar located at 53 Christopher Street in New York City’s Greenwich Village.  Although a common NYPD practice at the time, on this particular occasion patrons rebelled and fought back, igniting the spark leading to the modern gay rights movements. The Archives Center at NMAH has been actively collecting documents, ephemera, and Pride-related materials since the early 2000s.

While the uprising may have been the spark, the marches commemorating the uprising the following year were the fire. The first celebrations, termed “Gay Liberation Day” or “Christopher Street Liberation Day,” later to be known as Pride, were held on June 27 and 28, 1970 in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Diego, and San Francisco. Many LGBTQ organizations, including the Daughters of Bilitis, Gay Activists Alliance, Gay Liberation Front, the Mattachine Society, and others converged on these major cities to, in the words of one New York City marcher, “serve notice on every politician in the state and nation that homosexuals are not going to hide any more.” Even though the number of national and international Pride celebrations continues to grow annually, the road to universal celebration has not been smooth, with local LGBTQ organizations often encountering social and legal roadblocks before being allowed to celebrate. * 

Program for the Christopher Street Pride Celebration in Los Angeles, California, July 1976.

Central Intelligence Agency poster collected at Washington, DC Pride in 2019.

As the LGBTQ community has gained broader acceptance, one aspect of Pride that has changed radically is the corporate and community presence at Pride street fairs. During early Pride celebrations recognizable corporate logos, participating community organizations, churches, educational institutions, and locally based businesses were few or non-existent. During present-day celebrations more and more groups, businesses, and entities look to celebrate the event and compete to be a Pride sponsor. Multi-national corporations such as Comcast, Lockheed Martin, and Price Waterhouse Coopers, LLP, actively promote their companies at Pride. Government agencies, among them, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), National Park Service, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) showcase their internal LGBTQ affinity groups as well as highlight employment opportunities. Colleges, universities, local businesses, and community organizations all vie for prime table space at Pride street fairs.

Modern day Pride has become an opportunity for not only celebration and commemoration but also for product and service advertising, educational and community organizations to dispense information, businesses to target potential customers, all the while remaining a diverse platform for performers, activists, and community leaders. The progression of Pride will be the subject of an upcoming NMAH Tuesday Colloquium on August 10, illustrated with items from the Archives Center's collections.

* Sources:

“Thousands of Homosexuals Hold a Protest Rally in Central Park,” Fosburgh, Lacey, New York Times, June 29, 1970, page 1.

“15 to 20,000 Join Homosexual March.” Battenfeld, John for United Press International. The Atlanta Constitution, June 29, 1970, page 2A.

“Homosexuals Get ACLU Aid in Fight for Parade Permit.” Houston, Paul, Los Angeles Times, June 13, 1970, page A1.

“Homosexuals Stage Hollywood Parade,” Houston, Paul. Los Angeles Times, June 29, page 3.

“Gay Liberation Stages March to Civic Center,” Chicago Tribune, June 28, 1970, page A3.

Franklin A. Robinson, Jr., Archivist, Archives Center, National Museum of American History.

Note:

If you wish to attend Franklin Robinson's August 10 colloquium on Zoom, which will feature Archives Center collection items, contact David Haberstich at haberstichd@si.edu.

Seeking Pride in Our Collections

By Hannah Byrne 

Like so many employees across the Smithsonian (and at museums, libraries, archives, and cultural heritage institutions around the world), at the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives we are anxious to get back into collections to pick up research projects we put down at the start of the pandemic.  At the Archives, we help collect, preserve, and tell the stories of Smithsonian employees and community members. One research project that was halted by our departure, was looking more closely at our collections to understand the history and experience of LGBTQ+ employees at the Institution. 

As we celebrate Pride this year, we’re looking back at one of the founding documents of the Smithsonian Lesbian and Gay Issues Committee. In this memo, Smithsonian employees Leonard Hirsch and Eric Keller, as representatives of the committee, sought formal recognition from Smithsonian administration for the group to operate and advocate effectively for LGBTQ+ employees across the Institution. The memo--luckily for us was already digitized--accompanied the group’s founding guidelines. We learn so much from this document: the group’s origin and connection to National Coming Out Day, the invisibility of LGBTQ+ employees at the Smithsonian, and the work they hope to accomplish as an advocacy group. When we return to the archives, we hope to explore more collections related to this topic to learn more about this group, more about the diversity of their members, more about their initiatives, and more about their successes and challenges to advocate for LGBTQ+ employees at the Institution. 

Memorandum from Leonard P. Hirsch to James Early, June 3, 1991, page 1, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 15-218, Image no. SIA2017-045374a.

Memorandum from Leonard P. Hirsch to James Early, June 3, 1991, page 2, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 15-218, Image no. SIA2017-045374b.

Hannah Byrne, Program Assistant, Institutional History Division,

Smithsonian Institution Archives, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives

Tomlinson D. Todd and the Institute on Race Relations

Jennifer Morris
Archivist
Anacostia Community Museum

Tomlinson D. Todd (far right) interviewed this unidentified group of young people on his “Americans All,” radio program, circa 1950s. Henry P. Whitehead Collection, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution.

Issues with race and racial equity have a long history in the United States, and so do interracial organizations forming to combat discriminatory practices and demand social justice for all Americans. The story of the Institute on Race Relations, founded by Tomlinson D. Todd (1910–1987), is an example of a substantive but understudied history of collaborative anti-racist activism in the District of Columbia.

Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Tomlinson D. Todd grew up in Washington, DC in a middle-class family. Todd’s father, Rev. Williams W. Todd, served as pastor of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church and his mother was a schoolteacher in Virginia before marriage. Both parents were college educated and Tomlinson, similarly, pursued higher education after attending Armstrong High School. He graduated from Lincoln University in 1936, with a Bachelor of Arts Degree before studying sociology at Howard University.

Mr. Todd fought against racial injustice and believed bringing people together across racial lines would assist with harmony and understanding among the races and foster greater economic and political achievement in America. He started the Institute on Race Relations in August 1943 with the aim to establish “true democracy” in the nation’s capital.

One of the organization’s first undertakings was to protest discriminatory practices and Jim Crowism in several restaurants and theatres in downtown Washington, DC. They arranged for interracial groups to enter selected restaurants and request service to test segregation and other inequitable policies, strategically scheduled sit-ins with law enforcement to avoid arrest if managers contacted authorities. The organization also secured letters of support from local restaurants that catered to all people regardless of race. The statements were then provided to other heads of companies to persuade them to adopt non-discriminatory policies.  

A letter of support from Arthur Capper (1865-1951) to Tomlinson D. Todd.  Capper was a U.S. Senator from Kansas whom Mr. Todd interviewed on “Americans All,” broadcast before he retired from the U.S. Senate in 1939. Henry P. Whitehead Collection, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution.

The Institute considered it important to shed light on public spaces that denied service to African American soldiers. In 1945, the group ran an ad in the Washington Star newspaper (February 12, 1945) depicting two wounded war veterans, one black and one white, being refused entry together to DC cafes and theaters. In addition, the ad featured accounts of Black soldiers’ heroic deeds and their contributions to the war effort.

This ad denouncing discrimination in the nation's capital also appeared in the Evening Star newspaper on February 12, 1945. Henry P. Whitehead Collection, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution.

After several months of testing policies of discrimination and publicizing their findings, the Institute on Race Relations began sponsoring a series of activities to gain public support. They organized mass meetings at churches; held interracial parties; international fashion shows; intercultural dances; and banquets. The banquets were community forums led by senators, college presidents, civil rights leaders, and other government officials.

The Institution on Race Relations sold tickets to several of their events to garner financial support for the organization. Henry P. Whitehead Collection, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution.

On March 31, 1946, the Institute started sponsoring Mr. Todd’s weekly Sunday night radio program, “Americans All.” The program aired from 1946–1962 on various Washington, DC radio stations including WOOK, WWDC, and WGMS. The broadcast featured dramas, interviews, addresses, roundtable discussions, and renditions from well-known musical aggregations. The program documented a range of perspectives on race and race relations and garnered a large radio audience, while enlightening the city to the injustices of segregation and racial discrimination.

In the wake of  the Institute on Race Relations’ work to bring racial justice to the nation’s capital, the Coordinating Committee for the Enforcement of D.C. Anti-Discrimination Laws, led by activists Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954) and Annie Stein, brought a lawsuit against the Thompson Restaurant. On June 8, 1953, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in the Thompson Restaurant case that restaurants in the District of Columbia must accommodate all people, regardless of race, color, or creed. The decision ended discrimination and segregation in DC restaurants.

In 1952, Tomlinson D. Todd interviewed activist Mary Church Terrell (1863- 1954) on her 89th birthday. 

The activism of Tomlinson D. Todd and the Institute on Race Relations deserves further examination for its role in ending discriminatory practices in Washington, DC, and opening a space for interracial conversation and collaboration on a range of issues that affected the lives of all Americans.     

Help us make the records of the Institute on Race Relations more accessible and searchable through transcription on the Smithsonian Digital Volunteers Transcription Center:  here!

Cultures in Motion: The Huichol Film Project 1973-1975 Part II

For Part I of this blog post please click here.

 

Image from copy at University of California Libraries.
Accessed via Internet Archive

Kalman Müller was not to the first outsider to experience the Hikuri Neixa (a ceremony which marks the end of the Huichol year and the time prepare the soil for planting and to call upon the rain), but he was likely the first to film it. Other foreign researchers, mostly ethnographers, had visited San Andres Cohamiata during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The eminent Norwegian explorer and ethnographer Carl Lumholtz (1851 – 1922) had been the most prolific researcher to visit the place to date. On a grant from the American Museum of Natural History, Lumholtz visited most of the indigenous communities in Sierra Madre from 1895 to 1898. Following this experience, in 1900 and in 1902, Lumholtz would author Symbolism of the Huichol Indians and Unknown Mexico, which remain important works on the Huichol. 

Like Lumholtz, Müller also extensively documented Huichol lifeways, but he stuck to the camera. After filming the Hikuri Neixa ceremony in 1973, Müller produced and helped produce four more film projects totaling 43,590 feet of film (approximately 20 hours).[i] The Huichol ceremonies of Las Pachitas, the Peyote Pilgrimage, and the

Cambio de Varas are among other important ceremonies that Müller documented. Aspects of daily life of Huichols, with a particular emphasis on child rearing and development also figure prominently in the films.

Notes for camera roll 28, 

helping to identify film after processing and printing.

HSFA 1989.3.3 (ephemera)

This interest did not come from Müller himself, but came from of a group of researchers at the National Institute of Health, the patrons who had financed Müller’s expedition into the Sierra Madre.[ii]

Indeed, one key difference between the film project Müller led in Mexico and the film projects he had led in Europe or the South Pacific, was that the former was conceived and produced as a scientific project. The project was itself part of a broader research agenda to use film as a research method.



According to E. Richard Sorenson, Müller’s supervisor for this project and one of the proponents of the film research agenda:

because the light sensitive emulsion of film produces an objective chemical facsimile of the pattern of light falling on it, it preserves a phenomenological record of the pattern of light received. The data does not have to be screened by the cognitive organization of a human observer before it can be preserved. Because of this, film preserves information not just of what has been “seen” and “selected” by the culturally programmed mind of the filmer but also what he has not.[iii]

Film, in other words, would be inevitably more objective a method of describing reality than the pen of even the most experienced researcher. Unlike humans, the argument went, cameras could capture a fuller representation of the present, which would enable future researchers to see aspects which would have otherwise escaped the eye of the field researcher. Sorenson’s perspective was heavily influenced by his mentor Margaret Mead, who also believed in the objectivity and emancipatory nature of film. It was this faith in film that motivated Mead to help found the National Anthropological Film Center in 1975, the predecessor to today’s Human Studies Film Archives.

Huichol social interaction at the Fiesta de las Pachitas, Summer 1974 [iv]
Frame grab from HSFA 1989.3.1-3A

Applied to the Huichol people of San Andres, the research film method would generate increased understanding on questions such as: How do children in isolated societies become “enculturated”? How do psychedelic plants influence indigenous social organization? And, perhaps more importantly, what can the U.S. learn from people like the Huichol to address their own sociocultural ailments?[v]  

In practice, however, the research film method as Müller applied translated into long and mostly static takes without an explicit narrative arc or angle, and indeed most of the 46 film rolls that make up this collection were made this way. The other, and perhaps more important component of the Huichol project as a scientific enterprise, was the annotations to the films themselves. Dozens of synchronized and non-synchronized, Spanish and English annotations accompany the films Müller made. These annotations, drafted in collaboration with Eliseo Castro Villa (Müller’s main indigenous informant/collaborator in San Andres) and Rocio Echaverría (a government nurse who had worked in San Andres for many years prior to Müller’s arrival and who would marry him in 1973), added a rich layer of detail on the specific names and processes for the people, ceremonies, plants and other things filmed. 

Kalman Müller narrating the first time a child in San Andres Cohamiata consumes peyote during the Hikuri Neixa ceremony, Winter 1975. HSFA 1989.3.3-9A 16mm workprint (Workprint is a temporary copy of film footage used for editing. It can have unstable color dyes causing the film to fade to a reddish hue.)

This added layer greatly amplifies the amount of contextual information about the moving images that appear on the films. But it would be after longs hours of conversation—while annotating these films behind a flat bed editing table—when Müller, Castro, and Echaverría would reveal even more telling pieces of information regarding Huichol culture and behavior. For it was at these times, when the commentators would reveal in jest, irritation, or silence, how their visions and concerns about the Huichol people differed. 

It is through Echaverría’s silence, punctuated with occasional outbursts of detailed information during one of these sessions, that one learns about the ways the Huichol people were coping with the debt and poverty the U.S.-backed Green Revolution was bringing to Huichol communities in the early ‘70s. [vi] It is through Müller’s repetitive dismissal of her comments that we may infer why she keeps mostly silent through the annotation process. It is also through Castro’s mocking of Müller as a friend of the Huichols who does not know their names that we learn about his possible irritation with the project.[vii]  A frustration which other Huichols may or may not have shared with Castro but that nonetheless makes one wonder: what was the story on the other side of the lens?

Photo by Kalman Müller, 1975

As master storytellers who were historically weary of the power of narratives in shaping their cultures, landscapes, and societies, who knows how the Huichol of San Andres Cohamiata may have bent their own reality for Müller’s camera?  We may never know, but what is certain is that to understand how cultures negotiate power in film, we must look at what lay behind the camera as well as in front of it.  

Enabling viewers to do so—to see through both sides of the lens—is indeed what makes the Huichol Film Project most remarkable. Influenced by the scientific film method, the extensive annotations and structured approach to filmmaking of this collection offer not only a more nuanced image of the Huichol people as film subjects, but also a more detailed glimpse into the culture and perspective of its filmmakers. As a clear and multifaceted window into the past, this collection represents a valuable resource for scholars interested in the history of film and of the Huichol people. For its incredible detail on the social and cultural practices of their ancestors, the Huichol Film Project should be of most interest and value to the Huichol people of San Andres Cohamiata. 

José Carlos Pons Ballesteros

Graduate Fellow

NMNH-Department of Anthropology

Original film footage of the Huichol Film Project, along with sound recordings and associated documentation, form part of the collections of the Human Studies Film Archives.  You can find more information about this film collection here.

---

[i] According to catalogue records the Huichol Film Project is made of 50 camera rolls, according to the Processing Proposal for the collection, the Huichol Film Project is made of 46 rolls.  Muller’s footage was used to produce the edited film Huichols: People of the Peyote around 1976. Thomas Perry produced this film in collaboration with Steven Dreben, who edited and directed it.

[ii] There is dark back story to the main proponents of this research film method, visual anthropologist E. Richard Sorenson (1939 – 2015) and his mentor medical researcher Carleton Gajdusek (1923 – 2008), interest in childhood development, which I will not address here as it is complex and not the focus of this essay.  Suffice it to say that Gajdusek was charged with child molestation in April 1996. For more information about this watch the excellent documentary The Genius and the Boys by Bosse Lindquist (2009) or read: Spark, Ceridwen. 2009. “Carleton’s Kids: The Papua New Guinean Children of D. Carleton Gajdusek.” The Journal of Pacific History 44 (1): 1–19. 

[iii] Quote drawn from The Huichol Film Project, Unfinished Draft of the Huichol Enculturation: a Preliminary Report. Human Studies Film Archives, Smithsonian NMNH.

 [iv] The Huichols celebrate the Fiesta de las Pachitas around the time of Ash Wednesday. This ceremony mixes Mesoamerican, Mexican, and Catholic symbolism and rituals to commemorate the early attempts by Catholic missionaries to convert the Huichol people into Christianity. For this festival the Huichol participants are divided into two main bands, the Jews and the Toros, while the rest of the community watches, as the film roll 89.3.1-3A suggests, often in jest. The Jews represent the Huichol ancestors. The Huichol represent the Jews by painting their faces black, some men dressing as women, all of whom try to escape the Toros. Huichols representing the Toros carry red flags and bull horns with which they run after the Jews. One interesting historical relationship this festival, and in particular the depiction of Christian missionaries as Toros, may speak to is the connection between the arrival of Christianity and the development of cattle agriculture in northwest Mexico. For more information on this complex ceremony read:  Jáuregui, Jesús. "Las Pachitas en la Mesa del Nayar (Yaujque’e)." Dimensión antropológica 34 (2009). 

[v] The Huichol Film Project, Grant Application. Human Studies Film Archives, Smithsonian NMNH. The question as to what Western society can learn from indigenous peoples is not unique to the Huichol film project, in fact it has served as the inspiration for much of the ethnographical research that has been conducted for the last half-century. For a short but interesting comment on this matter see the Introduction by Kathleen Berrin in her edited book Art of the Huichol Indians, 1979.

[vi] Huichol FIlm Project, 1975, sound roll 1989.3.3-1, annotation track in Spanish. This tape describes the First Use of  a Corn Thresher

[vii] Huichol FIlm Project, 1975, round roll 1989.3.1-14, annotation track in Spanish. This tape describes the yearly Huichol Tree Planting Ceremony

Behind the Scenes: Scanning Sally Ride’s Archival Papers

As I began my contract archivist position with the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Archives at the Steven F Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, I had no idea what awaited me.  I remembered quite clearly from the job description that I would mostly be scanning the archival papers of Sally K. Ride, the first American woman in space, for a period of six months.  But the question remained of how I would accomplish the scanning.

Notebooks containing Ride's Notes from the Roger's Commission.

Sally K. Ride Papers, 

Box 13, Folder 8

In past archival jobs, I mainly used the standard tool for digital scanning: the Epson flatbed scanner.  When I arrived on my first day at Hazy, there was an Epson flatbed scanner in my own cubicle.  However, as that day went on, one of my supervisors showed me another machine that was situated in my cubicle.  This mechanical apparatus was a huge flatbed component with two long rods attached to it in the back.  At the top of each rod was a lighting fixture.  The other main feature, perhaps the main draw of this device, was a straightened rod in the middle of the flatbed.  This part of the device contained an attachment holding a camera that jutted out over to the flatbed’s middle section.  My supervisor explained to me that this device was called the Walter Nagel Archive Scanner.  She then told me that this device, along with its accompanying software program, Multidotscan, were recent purchases by the National Air and Space Museum Archives in order to perform bulk scanning of archival documents.  And, here’s the kicker: I would be the first archivist in the department to utilize this new technology. 

Seeing such a device might overwhelm any archivist, regardless of experience.  Yet, I soon mastered it!  With some training from my supervisor, I developed a process to use the Walter Nagel Archive Scanner (nicknamed” WALLY” in our office).  First, I would turn on the lights of the scanning apparatus, switch on the camera, boot up the computer (where the Multidotscan software was installed) and turn that on.  Once the program was up and running, I input the Sally Ride collection ID number (e.g. NASM.2014.0025) and then typed in the respective box and folder number of the items that I was scanning.  After all of that set up, I was ready to begin scanning over 38,000 pages of Sally Ride’s archival materials.

Invitation to Become a Member of the International Platform Association, 1985
Sally K. Ride Papers, Box 40, Folder 2

Archives and technological innovations go hand-in-hand, mainly because any new technological devices can help our profession make knowledge and information more available to researchers and the general public.  In this increasing digital age, a scanning device such as WALLY was quite useful in a number of ways:

1.     The software (via the camera) was able to adjust easily to a variety of different document sizes.  From the usual 8x11 inch size papers to various small documents such as business cards to invitations, WALLY was able to attune itself to these different sizes automatically.  This was a tremendous advantage for me, as I was able to go through hundreds of documents each day, and not have to painstakingly adjust the scanning parameters as I would with an Epson flatbed scanner’s software.

2.     A component of the Multidotscan software allowed me to scan two pages of soft-bound books at once.  Using this aspect of WALLY allowed me to quickly scan books that would have taken a few days to scan with a regular flatbed scanner scanning one page at a time.

3.     Scanning the contents of each folder, I would sometimes get a finished scan that I felt wasn’t up to my own (and the Archives’) standards of quality.  These usually consisted of documents where the text, depending on the lighting of the scanning apparatus, made it come across as faded.  For these mishaps, I would delete the previous scan, reposition the archival item, and scan it again to get the best quality scan.  Normally when using a flatbed scanner, deleting a scan because it is substandard would require going back into the Epson software and retyping the previous number to maintain proper numerical order.  However, with WALLY, I could take as many scans as I wanted of one item and delete all of them without worrying about the numerical order.  Doing so allowed me, when I finished scanning the contents of a folder, to transfer the scanned items over to another computer in my cubicle with the Multidotscan software, which compiled and numbered all of the scanned items, excluding my deletions.

National Association for Girls and Women in Sports Certificate, 1984
Sally K. Ride Papers, Box 40, Folder 6

These three advantages that I have listed were of great help in being able to scan the entirety of Sally Ride’s collection.  I was able, in my best estimates, to get through two to three boxes per day. All of this resulted in finishing the scanning of the collection in early February 2020.

Being the first NASM Archives user of the WALLY Scanner was advantageous, as it helped me to digitize and process a collection of 63 boxes (24 cubic feet) within a period of six months; if I had used an Epson flatbed scanner, it would have taken several years!  The use of WALLY to efficiently digitize document collections perfectly synchs with the Smithsonian's main mission: the “increase and diffusion of knowledge.”

George Tyler Crock

Project Archivist

Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Archives


*Be sure to check out another blog about this collection, "Transcribing the Sally K. Ride Papers", by Patti Williams.

The Smithsonian’s Journey of Computerized Library and Archives (2010-2019)

Read Part I : The First Integrated Library System
Read Part II:  Stepping Outside of the Box 

PART III:   INCREASING ACCESS THROUGH BROADER AND DEEPER REACH

Contributing to the start of Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)

The idea of a national digital library had been circulating among librarians, scholars, educators, and private industry representatives in the United States since the early 1990s.  The DPLA planning process began in October 2010 at a meeting in Cambridge, M.A. During this meeting, 40 leaders from libraries, foundations, academia, and technology projects agreed to work together to create an open and distributed network of comprehensive online resources which are provided by the U.S. libraries, archives, universities and museums.    

The planning team solicited ideas for how this open platform should work and received hundreds of responses from around the country.  Martin Kalfatovic of Smithsonian Libraries approached me for possible ideas. We decided to work with the Library of Congress (LC) and the National Archives Record Administration (NARA) to develop a joint proposal that suggested using the Smithsonian Collections Search Center for DPLA.  We took about 100 MARC records from LC and about 20 MARC records from NARA and, using the Smithsonian Index Metadata model, imported them into the Smithsonian Collection Search Center test system. 

The LC and NARA records worked well among the Smithsonian records in our Collections Search Center without great effort.  This success affirms the importance of developing a system that includes stringent data standards.   We were among the top six submissions selected by the DPLA planning committee for a final open presentation hosted at NARA. 

In December 2010, the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University convened leading experts in libraries, technology, law, and education and began work on this ambitious project. I was part of this meeting and worked among those who contributed their knowledge for a brand new DPLA system.  DPLA was launched in April 2013 with contributions from a small number of universities, libraries and museums.  The Smithsonian contributed tens of thousands of library and archives records in the initial launch and supported the Creative Common CC0 for “No Copyright Reserved” on metadata records.  To expand Smithsonian participation, Library Director Nancy Gwinn reached out to many Smithsonian museum directors for support.  Today, the Smithsonian Institution contributes 3.6 million records to DPLA monthly.  This number is expected to increase over time.

Increasing Access and Public Engagement through the Smithsonian Transcription Center

Two examples of Transcription Page

Even though the Smithsonian had millions of collections and historical documents online, accessibility remained a challenge.  Many digitized materials are view-able but not easily searchable; many handwritten materials are difficult to read and understand and many collections were not online.  By creating a transcription center, we could address some of these limitations and support better discovery across disciplines Smithsonian wide.

We began planning and developing the new software platform in 2012.  We worked closely with several archival unit partners to launch the Transcription Center (http://transcription.si.edu) on June 15, 2013.

The Transcription Center was designed to support various object types and material formats, including those held by not just libraries and archives, but museums as well.  Object types included diaries, field books, correspondence, currency bank notes, sound-recordings, photo albums, botanical specimen labels, cataloging sheets, joke index cards, and more. The project crowdsources both the transcribing and reviewing processes by public volunteers, allowing the Smithsonian staff the option to conduct final approval before posting the record online.  We have discovered that because our digital volunteers produce such accurate transcriptions, some staff find no need to review the work!  Transcribed contents are immediately searchable , displayed online in the Collections Search Center and downloadable as PDF files,. Public participation has been phenomenal, with 13,890 digital volunteers and 496,300 pages transcribed as of December 2019, including creating 130,755 catalog records that were previously unavailable to the public. 

Transcribed Text on display automatically with the corresponding image

A full-time project coordinator is on staff to ensure timely communications between the Smithsonian and the public via emails and social media platforms.  Meghan Ferriter, Andres Almeida and Caitlin Haynes served as the coordinators consecutively. It is very important that our volunteers feel connected to the Smithsonian Institution and that their contribution is recognized and greatly appreciated.  We express our appreciation by crediting the volunteers in the transcribed records and the PDF files.


The Transcription Center is more than a website to transcribe historic documents. It is a platform for us to increase our public outreach and engagement.  Being able to interact with our volunteers was one of the most rewarding aspect of this project.   Many of our dedicated volunteers continue to achieve huge progress day after day.  They not only transcribing thousands of pages, but also going above and beyond sharing knowledge and enhancing Smithsonian collections by entering additional information in the note fields on each page.

The Transcription Center has also become a useful tools to Smithsonian social media managers of individual museums. Many Of them have share stories uncovered from the Transcription Center in their outreach campaigns, and they also want to continue the relationship with the Transcription Center in the future. This digital platform demonstrates how transcription work can not only create and diffuse knowledge, but also develop strong community among digital volunteers  and Smithsonian.   

Smithsonian Online Virtual Archives (SOVA) and ArchivesSpace

Archives by their very nature are different from libraries: Most libraries include individual items such as books and journals, while archival collections contain multiple records that are both unique, interrelated and often arranged in a nested hierarchy structure. A library system cannot adequately support archival needs.  Increasingly, archival staff began calling for a system that specifically addressed the unique needs of archives, To remedy this problem, a Melon Foundation grant started software development of The Archivists’ Toolkit™ system in 2006. It was the first open source archival data management system to provide broad, integrated support for the management of archives.

The Smithsonian began to experiment with The Archivists’ Toolkit™ (AT) software system in 2011.  First, we migrated 7,000 MARC records into the new AT system. This allowed for series, box and folder level information to be managed hierarchically within an information management system.  The AT system was superseded in late 2013 by ArchivesSpace.  Both open source software systems allowed archivists to manage archives using a collection-centric approach.

The Internal Smithsonian ArchivesSpace Collections Management System

A difference between an item-centric management approach and a collection-centric approach is that archival materials need finding aids, which increase accessibility to the collection.  At the time, the Smithsonian’s fourteen archival units had different understandings and approaches to description and management.   Barbara Aikens, Head of Collections Processing at the Archives of American Art, took the lead to eliminate these inconsistencies.  She wrote five internal and external grants totaling $499,900 between 2010 and 2016 on behalf of the Smithsonian archival units. The grants allowed the Smithsonian to conduct a pan-institutional Encoded Archival Description (EAD) Gap Analysis Study and hire EAD Metadata Coordinators to focus on content creation and support.  These coordinators, Mark Custer and Nancy Kennedy, proved essential to this project.  Managed by OCIO LASSB, they developed and managed an EAD implementation plan for each Smithsonian archival unit.  This work included assisting units to convert legacy finding aids to EAD standards, answering all questions, and fixing dilemmas as they occurred throughout the system’s implementation.  Meanwhile, we collaborated among all of the archival units and supported their backlog processing projects. The migration from the Horizon MARC system to ArchivesSpace was a very complex process which required folding 400,000 flat records into hierarchical EAD finding aids.  In the end, archives across the institution created 16,800 new EAD finding aids in ArchivesSpace, and the quality of content description at the Smithsonian improved dramatically.

Record Display Supporting Hierarchy levels of Collection, Series, Box and Folder in SOVA

While the quality and quantity of the archival descriptions grew exponentially, public searching and display remained a challenge.  To remedy this, we focused on developing and launching the Smithsonian Online Virtual Archives (http://SOVA.si.edu) in October 2015.    For the first time, the new systems allowed users to search archival materials at all levels (collections, series and items), enabled the  visual display of the hierarchy of the record and dynamically generated EAD online finding aids for nearly 17,000 collections, many of which contain tens of thousands of individual items in multiple series, box and folders.

Screenshots of the search result page with tabs to browse by collections, sub-series or digital items

The ArchivesSpace and SOVA systems enable a digital workflow that is organized, systematic, scalable, and incorporates the digitization process.  In addition, the Smithsonian Digital Access Management System (DAMS) supports seamless metadata synchronization and media file links among all systems.  These systems guide archivists to catalog, digitize, store, link and share digital images, allowing information systems to keep track of mass amounts of media files every step of the way.  Today, there are over 6.7 million images, sound and video recording electronic resources in SOVA.

In 2019, the Smithsonian received accolades for its SOVA and Collections Search Center (CSC).  An online survey, conducted during a NEA-funded workshop on developing in-house collections management systems and online discovery portals, asked professionals to name their favorite online aggregate search center. The Smithsonian’s CSC and SOVA systems were voted the best among all LAM (libraries, archives, and museums) institutions.


Final Thoughts

It has been a long and rewarding journey in the fields of information management and public service.  Knowing the history of the Smithsonian’s transformative information management systems and efforts gives us valuable insight that we can use as we work towards new goals and solving challenges.  The Smithsonian Institution will continue to push forward to support research, education and public service by increasing its mass digitization efforts.  With tens of millions of collections online already, we look forward to making Open Access our next major milestone in 2020.

Read Part I : The First Integrated Library System
Read Part II:  Stepping Outside of the Box 


Ching-hsien Wang,  Branch Manager
Library and Archives Systems Support Branch (LASSB)
Office of the Chief Information Officer