During the intensive effort to photograph paintings in our Fort Ticonderoga Collection, two objects in the Pavilion Collection presented the team with a challenge. These mirrors, in an elaborate Rococo or Chippendale style from the late 18th century, once belonged to Grace Channing Stetson, granddaughter of Unitarian preacher William Ellery Channing and cousin to museum […]

From school picture day to classical marble busts, portraits are ubiquitous. They are so much a part of daily life that it is easy to forget how important they are and what they reveal about the person being represented. This is as true for selfies as it is for portrait paintings like that of museum […]

Cataloging the paintings from the Pavilion has shed light on surprising details as our focus shifted from taking pictures to incorporating them into catalog records in the Fort Ticonderoga database. The cataloging process involves looking at paintings and other objects from many different angles to condense information into one location. We describe what the object […]

Over the next few weeks, paintings from the Pavilion are getting cataloged alongside those in the wider Fort Ticonderoga Museum collection. Taking high-resolution photographs of collections objects is a key step to making them accessible in the Ticonderoga Collections Online database. Paintings from the Pavilion include many family portraits and different views of the ruins […]

This past week, the collections and curatorial teams tackled one of the challenging aspects of the Pavilion collection—the family silver.   Unlike the furniture and paintings that make up the core Pavilion collection accessioned in the 1970s and assigned unique object ID numbers, all of the silver that stayed in Ticonderoga year-round was given a […]

What do the holidays mean to you and your family? For museum co-founders, Stephen and Sarah Pell, this time of year would mean hosting holiday events. Elaborate holiday fetes provided families an opportunity to display their best silver and china, be it flatware, serving dishes, and everything in between—such pieces reflected their history, success, and […]

Restoring the Pavilion goes beyond the building itself. Part of the adaptive reuse plan involves returning objects to their historic locations within the building whenever appropriate, and some of those objects need their own restoration and adaptation to make their return possible. Perhaps the best example in the Pavilion collection is the centerpiece of the […]

The winter holidays are a time to gather with family and friends, enjoying good food and better company, catching up with each other’s lives, and retelling favorite stories from past gatherings. This same shift can happen with objects in museum collections. Memories fade and details written down decades later may not accurately relate the history […]