If you’re keeping track of the progress of renovations occurring at our building, you know that construction started last month, and that we are in our new temporary office space on campus. If you aren’t up to date on the project, read these two blogs out to see the changes that have already occurred (here and here).
Last week our non-student volunteers returned to duty. They were on a two-month hiatus while we figured out what projects they could assist with in our new space. With a month of our stay at the Abbot campus behind us, we decided it was time for the volunteers to come back and help carry out inventory clean-up. While the surroundings have changed, Mike and Richard picked right up where they left off.
Volunteer Mike rehousing items for inventory clean-up.
If you are interested in volunteering at the Peabody, you can contact me at jbergmanmccool@andover.edu. Currently we have limited capacity, but when we are back in our building in the fall, we’ll have a lot more space and the big job of moving the collection into our newly redesigned collection space.
Hello from Abbot Campus! The Peabody staff have successfully moved to the School Room in Abbot Hall where we will be residing throughout the course of Phase 1 of the Peabody building renewal project. Our staff officially moved out of the Peabody at the end of April – see our Curator of Collections, Marla Taylor’s blog for updates on the building renewal project! We will continue to provide updates on the building project throughout the summer, so keep an eye out for more blogs coming soon!
Although our circumstances and environment have changed, the Peabody staff have continued most of their operations such as managing the care and organization of the collections, teaching lesson units across campus, and continuing consultation and repatriation work with tribal communities.
Abbot Academy students in the School Room at Abbot Hall, 1828-1829
After a few weeks of settling in, we’ve been able to welcome our Peabody volunteers back to our temporary space and have even hosted our Peabody Advisory Committee members for our annual Peabody Spring PAC meeting. In addition, the Peabody was fortunate to sponsor contemporary indigenous artists Dominique, Mia, ad Maxine Toya, for their annual spring visit to PA campus.
The Toya family teaches a week long workshop for students in Thayer Zaeder’s ceramic classes. We were lucky enough this year to host our PAC meeting and the Toya’s workshop in the same week, giving opportunity for our PAC members to meet the Toya’s and observe their work with students. For more about this workshop and past visits check out this blog by Peabody Director, Ryan Wheeler. For photos from the Toya’s most recent visit, check out our Smug Mug album here!
As summer approaches, we look forward to continuing partnership with the Andover Summer, Dig This! Class and greeting alumni back to the Andover campus during Reunion Weekend. Despite the Peabody building being closed during this time, the Peabody staff and several Peabody Advisory Committee members will be hosting a table during reunion lunch on the Richard T. Greener Quad from 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM on Saturday, June 10th. This will give alumni and visitors the ability to meet the Peabody and learn more about our current activities, initiatives, and building project updates.
Join the Peabody on Greener Quad at PA Reunion Weekend, Saturday, June 10th!
To celebrate our one month anniversary in the Abbot Hall School Room, the Communications Department was generous enough to host an Abbot Hall Meet & Greet as a welcome to the Peabody and opportunity for us to meet our new neighbors. Thank you Communications Team!
Around this time, we post a blog about our visit to the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA). The meeting was held March 29th – April 2nd, 2023 in Portland, Oregon, at the Oregon Convention Center.
The SAA Annual Meeting is the largest gathering of archaeologists of the Americas, attracting thousands of archaeologists each year from around the world (over 45 countries!) This conference offers archaeologists the ability to present and share research, network and explore the exhibit hall, and participate in excursions, receptions, and career development opportunities.
The Society for American Archaeology was founded in 1934 and held its first meeting at Phillips Academy Andover (That’s right! The very campus the Peabody calls home) in December 1935. Longtime Peabody Director, Doug Byers, served as the editor of the Society’s flagship publication – American Antiquity. Past Peabody Director, Richard “Scotty” MacNeish, served as president of SAA at one time as well.
Today, the SAA is comprised of over 7,000 members and our Peabody staff and Peabody Advisory Committee (PAC) continue to be involved with SAA. Peabody personnel regularly present papers and posters in meeting sessions, host a booth in the meeting’s exhibit hall, and sponsor the Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology Award for Archaeology and Education.
For more on the Peabody’s previous visits to the SAA Annual Meeting check out our blogs here, here, and here!
Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology Award for Archaeology and Education
The Robert S. Peabody Institute Award for Archaeology and Education recognizes excellence of individuals or institutions in using archaeological methods, theory, and/or data to enliven, enrich, and enhance other disciplines, and to foster the community of archaeology education practitioners. The Peabody Award will spotlight these contributions and promote teaching ideas, exercises, activities, and methods across the educational spectrum, from K-12 through higher education and including public education broadly conceived.
This year’s recipient of the Peabody Award is Pima Community College Centre for Archaeological Field Training. Pima Community College Centre for Archaeological Field Training has earned the Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology Award for Archaeology and Education for their long-term commitment to archaeology education. Through the Pima Community College Archaeology Centre’s certificate program, which includes a Southwest Prehistory pathway, a field Methods pathway, and a GIS and Technology pathway, students learn the fundamentals of archaeological methods, ethics, and technology while attending community college and earning a certificate at affordable rates. Pima Community College’s programs provide an important career pathway for prospective archaeologists in a time when there are increasing demands for CRM professionals. Importantly, the program provides a career pathway for local students that does not require a four-year university education. PCC’s Archaeology Program, and the unique educational services it provides, exemplify what should be replicated across the country to provide affordable, equitable, and accessible education to students thinking about careers in archaeology.
Outstanding Public Archaeology Initiative Award
The Outstanding Public Archaeology Initiative Award continues the tradition begun by the Award for Excellence in Public Education (1997-2020) of recognizing exemplary public engagement efforts but refocuses on discrete projects (defined as a project with a clear start and end date). This award recognizes the best short-term initiatives such as (but not limited to) the following: exhibits, lesson plans, products, or other short-term outreach projects.
This year’s recipient was none other than The Massachusetts Archaeological Society (MAS) and the Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology (RSP)! The Massachusetts Archaeological Society and the Robert S. Peabody Institute have earned the Outstanding Public Archaeology Initiative Award for their live presentation and video series “Diggin’ In: Digital Conversations with Archaeologists.” The series consisted of five seasons, with 49 total episodes. These were broadcast live over Zoom reaching an initial audience of 350 over Zoom for the live program, then 7,000 views on YouTube. The program’s goals were to connect the public to research by emerging or underrepresented scholars in archaeology and spotlight innovative or marginalized research topics, themes, and methodologies. The focus of “Diggin’ In” on these critical aspects of archaeology helped to generate media coverage of these themes. This initiative demonstrates the critical role archaeologists can play in communicating contemporary themes in archaeology to the public.
SAA Award presented to the Massachusetts Archaeological Society and Robert S. Peabody Institute at the SAA’s 88th Annual Meeting earlier this month.
For more information about the Diggin’ In series, check out this article for the New England Museum Association’s digital publication. The article was written by Diggin’ In co-hosts and creators, Lindsay Randall (previous Curator of Education for the Peabody and current MAS Vice Chair/Secretary) and Suanna Crowley (MAS Trustee).
You can check out all seasons of the Diggin’ In series on our Peabody YouTube page!
For those interested in attending the SAA’s annual meetings, the 89th Annual Meeting will be held April 17 – April 21, 2024 in New Orleans, Louisiana, at the New Orleans Marriott and the Sheraton New Orleans. We hope to see you there next year!
It is finally happening – the Peabody Institute building project is underway!
It has been quite a whirlwind preparing for this project over the past months (planning began in earnest about a year ago).
Since my last update, the full collection has been relocated within the building, asbestos has been remediated, the old storage bays have been demolished, and staff transitioned to working at small folding tables. We made the move to our temporary office space on-campus and are beginning to settle in.
So much credit goes to the Peabody staff members (and past interns) who collaborated to facilitate keeping the collection safe and organized during this process – thank you all!
We will keep you updated on progress as we are able.
This project will rely on philanthropic support from our donor community. To help advance this critical renovation, please contact Beth Parsons, director for museums and educational outreach, at 978-749-4523 or bparsons@andover.edu.
At this year’s American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies (ASECS) conference, I had the opportunity to participate in the roundtable Teaching the Global Eighteenth Century. Phillips Academy instructor in history and social sciences Natalya Baldyga and I presented Assimilation, Acculturation, Catachresis, and Syncretism: Employing Archaeology to Foreground Indigenous Resistance in the Spanish Southwest, sharing our experiences teaching the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 to History 200 classes at the Academy.
Contemporary Indigenous artist Jason Garcia’s take on the Pueblo Revolt combines traditional materials and methods with graphic designs depicting Po’Pay, the architect of the revolt, as a comic book superhero. These two pieces are in the collection of the Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology–you can see the vessel on the right in the inaugural exhibition of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Latino.
If you are not familiar with the Pueblo Revolt, it is a pivotal moment in the history of the Southwest and the modern descendants of those who fought Spanish colonization at the end of the seventeenth century. Our abstract has a little more information on the Revolt and our approach:
Using the case study of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, our presentation illustrates how archaeological artifacts can be employed to unsettle and decenter colonial narratives by refocusing the North American story of the early eighteenth century on Indigenous peoples of the Spanish Southwest. Too often, Anglophone histories associate the long eighteenth century in the Americas with English colonialism in general, and with the American Revolution in particular. We ask students to consider instead the “first American Revolution,” in which the Pueblo Peoples, led by the Tewa religious leader Po’pay, confronted missionaries and soldiers in the Spanish borderlands of what is now New Mexico. In our classes, students explore both artifacts from the Pueblo Revolt and contemporary Puebloan artistic responses to the historical event, foregrounding Indigenous resistance and survival over tales of erasure and domination. This approach both reorientates students’ understanding of colonial North American history towards wider global narratives of European expansion, and, perhaps more importantly, introduces students to multiple ways that Indigenous peoples adapted to, resisted, and overcame the efforts to erase their cultural identities and physical existence.
Drs. Wheeler and Baldyga also celebrated their anniversary during the conference.
The Peabody Institute has long offered various versions of a Pueblo Revolt lesson, but the current iteration has greatly benefitted from Dr. Baldyga’s experience and training. Together we’ve developed the lesson, typically delivered in the world history survey course for tenth grade, providing students with anthropological concepts, like assimilation and catachresis, that they can use in other settings, as well as foregrounding contemporary Indigenous perspectives and objects directly related to the Revolt. Conversations with other participants in the workshop were productive, especially in their pedagogical approach to topics like the production of sugar.
Mark your calendars! Save the date! PA Giving Day begins Wednesday, March 29, 2023! This year, the PA Giving Day event will run from 9am on Wednesday, March 29th to noon on Thursday, March 30th (Eastern Time).
Support the Peabody by making a gift of any size and help us jump-start this amazing day! For those inspired to give early, please complete the PA Giving Day form here! Please be sure to select the Peabody Institute of Archaeology under the “designation” section. Any gift made in advance of the event will count toward PA Giving Day totals. Your donation will also be included in all applicable matches. This is a wonderful way to maximize your giving and inspire others to do the same.
To date, we have $11,000 in match funds, but are still hoping to have more!
Keep a look out for exciting posts and takeovers across our social media channels leading up to PA Giving Day! Support what you love, support the Peabody!
Students examine a mock excavation of a local archaeological site, one that highlights Andover’s historical status as a Native American trading center.
One cool thing about the Peabody is the varied types of experiences and interests of the people working here. It’s what makes the blog so interesting! For years now, Peabody employees have been making regular blog posts on whatever topic they can think of. From interesting insights into the museum world, to personal interests of the writer, there is always something to look forward to every month.
With new blog posts coming out on such a regular basis, it can be easy to forget that there is quite an accumulation of interesting articles on the Peabody’s website. One can read posts going back to the fall of 2015! While helping to archive the blog, I’ve been reading a lot of fascinating pages, making notes of ones that I found particularly interesting. Creating this was the logical next step, a look back, a spotlight on blogs past. My own blog about blogs!
Note: I am limiting my self to five entries, but this list could easily be three times longer!
Ever since reading The Age of Vikings by Anders Winroth I’ve had a big interest in medieval Scandinavian history. The Vikings and their contemporaries have such a fascinating history, and maintain a strong footprint in popular culture. So imagine my surprise when I found a blog about Viking material at the Peabody!…well, sort of. You should look for yourself!
In teaching a few different classes at the Peabody, the concept of corn comes up quite a bit. Especially since it was a focus of former director Richard “Scotty” MacNeish. When one student asked about why corn spread so far and wide, I recall answering in a jovial way “well you see, humans LOVE corn, and will take any opportunity to grow it!” This blog post is a fascinating dive into the history of this staple crop.
At a glance, the history of archeology (and similar fields) seems very frontloaded with men. However, it’s not hard to find plenty of women heavily involved. Maybe not quite as visible, but just as important, if not more so. This blog post goes into the history of women involved with the Peabody!
Due to the nature of museums, strange tales often go hand and hand with their history, and the Peabody is not lacking in this department. This blog post discusses an interesting one, a theft in the 80s that struck multiple New England museums! If you are interested in a mini crime drama, complete with information on its resolution, this one is worth a look.
I’m a person who would consider themselves an avid “gamer,” as well as one with a background in public history (basically, historical engagement outside of a classroom). Therefore, when I see a game, or a blog post in this case, that combines my two interests, there is no way I am not going to talk about it! This post talks about the game “Never Alone,” developed by Upper One Games and originally released in late 2014. The game was about an Iñupiat girl who goes on an adventure with a fox, based on a traditional Iñupiat tale. The game was made in cooperation with Cook Inlet tribal council, and features…well I don’t want to spoil the post too much! Take a look for yourself!
The Peabody is currently in the pre-construction phase of a much-needed building update! This is Phase 1 of a two-phase project.
The project has three main goals:
Replace the current basement shelving (that was constructed in the very early 1900s) with modern mobile shelving
Provide HVAC and sprinklers for the collections areas
Install an elevator and meet other code compliance issues
The Peabody staff have been working diligently to ensure the safety of all the collections during this work. We have coordinated with the construction company, security vendors, tribal partners, and our Phillips Academy project manager to make the project a success. There is still a lot to do – and construction hasn’t even started yet!
Here are some photos of the work as it has been happening:
This project will rely on philanthropic support from our donor community. To help advance this critical renovation, please contact Beth Parsons, director for museums and educational outreach, at 978-749-4523 or bparsons@andover.edu.
On February 15, 2023 we learned about the death of Raquel Welch. You might think, what does Raquel Welch have to do with archaeology? Well, a lot and a little. After her performance in the 1966 sci-fi film Fantastic Voyage Welch signed a contract with 20th Century Fox and was then “loaned” to Hammer films for One Million Years B.C., a low-budget cave-person movie. In One Million Welch played Loana, probably best remembered for her fur-trimmed bikini, battles against Ray Harryhausen’s Dynamation dinosaurs, and settling conflicts between the Rock and Shell tribes.
Raquel Welch as the out-sized heroine of One Million Years B.C. (1966).
I’ve always been a big fan of Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion creature effects, including greats like The Valley of Gwangi (1969), 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957), The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), Mysterious Island (1961), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), and many more. And yes, most archaeologists like dinosaurs, but cringe at the idea that archaeology has anything to do with them or that ancient humans ever even saw one—modern humans first appear around 300,000 years ago, about 65 million years after dinosaurs became extinct. A million years ago is solidly in the middle of the Pleistocene, a geological epoch that began around 2.5 million years ago. During the Pleistocene, we had lots of animals that you would recognize today—plenty of reptiles and birds and mammals—as well as megafauna like mastodons and mammoths, giant sloths, glyptodons, and more. We did have people, including Homo erectus.
One Million B.C. movie poster (1940).
So One Million Years B.C. gets a lot wrong. First, the idea of 1 million B.C. bugs me. B.C. means “before Christ,” though more people are moving to a version like BCE, which means “before the common or current era,” in other words the year 1 that our modern calendar has fixed as a starting point. So 1 million years B.C. is literally 1,000,000 years ago plus another 2,000 or so years. What’s 2,000 when we are talking millions?! I checked, and, perhaps not surprisingly, there were no scientific consultants on the film. Ray Harryhausen famously quipped that they weren’t making movies for scientists and doubted said scientists would go to see such films anyway (so wrong!). In her memoir, Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage, Welch talks about her own attempt to provide some notes to the film’s director Don Chaffey, but he wasn’t interested. What I didn’t know until recently, however, is that One Million Years B.C. is a remake of the 1940 film One Million B.C., which starred Victor Mature, Carole Landis, and Lon Chaney Jr. No Harryhausen effects there, however, there was a pig dressed in a Triceratops suit, lots of out-sized lizards, and even some animals more appropriate to the time like a woolly mammoth and an armadillo dressed as its megafauna ancestor Glyptodon.
This got me wondering what the earliest cave-people movie was, and led me to D.W. Griffith’s Man’s Genesis: A Psychological Comedy Founded on Darwin’s Theory of the Genesis of Man (1912). You can see some of the film on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ3gaYbb38I. Griffith was involved in the production of the 1940 One Million, and all the films have some similar themes, namely conflict and sex. They don’t stop with the Raquel Welch version.
Peter Elliott is the go-to actor for non-human primates, including the titular role in 1988’s Missing Link.
One Million Years B.C. did pretty well at the box office, but it’s really just one film in a long line of cave-people movies. Both Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton made their versions, likely riffing on Man’s Genesis (Keaton invents golf in 1923’s Three Ages). A few years ago I challenged my Human Origins students to look at stereotypes about Neanderthals and they found the 1962 movie Eegah, which is sort of a mashup of 60’s beach party movies and the cave-people genre. The $15,000 budget may give you a sense of the film. Don Chaffey, the director of One Million Years B.C. revisited the genre in 1971 with Creatures the World Forgot (sans Raquel Welch, but with a very similar plot and movie poster!), and the 1980s has numerous entries with Ringo Starr’s comedy Caveman (1981), a defrosted Neanderthal in Iceman (1984), Rae Dawn Chong in Quest for Fire (1981), Daryl Hannah in The Clan of the Cave Bear (1986), based on the Jean M. Auel books, and even Peter Elliott (with narration by Michael Gambon) as the last Australopithecus in Missing Link (1988).
Ringo Starr and friends in 1981’s comedy Caveman.
Ringo Starr aside, Quest for Fire and The Clan of the Cave Bear are two of the best-known cave-people movies since Welch’s One Million. What’s interesting is that Quest was a box office success and garnered some critical acclaim, while Clan was a flop. Both lack dinosaurs, so that’s good. And, both explore a lot of the same themes that come up in these movies over and over—conflict between different species of humans, sex and love, and the role of technology in becoming human. Many of the critics noted that Quest had a lot of humor, either intended or not, and that’s perhaps part of the charm as film critic Roger Ebert noted. Archaeologists and anthropologists at the time were not so kind. Philip Leiberman, writing in the American Anthropologist, delivers a strident critique of the “primitive” languages developed by author Anthony Burgess for Quest, noting that, “Burgess just doesn’t seem to know anything about phonological studies, developmental studies of the acquisition of speech by children, psychoacoustic studies of speech perception,” etc. Owen Lovejoy, writing in Archaeology magazine, describes Quest as a disaster on several fronts, noting specifically that “critical human qualities such as kinship, economics, infant care, symbolism and religion, language, technology, and so on, are simply glossed over as though they appeared magically with the Upper Palaeolithic,” though he does appreciate the lack of dinosaurs. One important point that Lovejoy makes is that the film tries to be a serious attempt to depict the distant human past and that, perhaps, our inability as anthropologists to synthesize this for the public is what is lacking. Quest didn’t benefit from scientific advisors, beyond Burgess’s work to make the primitive languages and Desmond Morris’s work on animal behavior and vocalizations.
Rae Dawn Chong as Ika in Quest for Fire.
The cinema isn’t done with the cave-people genre yet. In 2008, 10,000 BC (again with the BC!) joined the ranks as a visually stunning epic that suffers from many past sins, including some serious anachronisms. I haven’t watched 10,000 BC, but it involves cave-people, Pleistocene fauna, as well as people riding horses and traveling in ships. The movie did pretty well at the box office. Reflecting on this genre of cave-people movies makes me realize that there is a lot of interest in the distant past, but, as Owen Lovejoy noted in his review of Quest for Fire, us anthropologists and archaeologist haven’t been so good at providing a compelling narrative. In fact, a lot of the interspecies conflict in these films can really be attributed to pervasive ideas in studies of human evolution that have emphasized different species based on very slight differences in skeletal anatomy. The more we learn, we find that Neanderthals and modern humans are very similar and shared genetics when they existed in the same place. Maybe Quest for Fire got that right? Godspeed Raquel.
Compare posters for Don Chaffey’s 1971 Creatures the World Forgot with the Raquel Welch classic One Million Years B.C., also directed by Chaffey for Hammer.
Stuart Travis mural at the Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology
Ever wonder what lies behind a photograph? Beyond the simple description scrawled on the back of each image? The Peabody collection contains more than 600,000 artifacts, photographs, and documents. The Peabody’s photograph collection, specifically, is extensive and contains many interesting, yet untold stories. To bring these stories and photographs to light, we would like to share them with YOU, fellow readers, in our blog series, Behind the Photograph. You can find these stories using our BehindThePhoto tag on our blog.
The Mural
As the Peabody enters the pre-construction phase of a much-needed renovation project, I’ve been looking back at some of our old photos of the building. This image in particular is fascinating, as it was taken during the installation of the Peabody’s Stuart Travis mural in 1938. Those of you who have visited the Peabody may find the room in this image familiar – it’s the interior of our front entrance door! Although those columns behind the mural have since been removed, the crown molding, floor, and archways are still present at the Peabody today. Around the perimeter of the image you’ll find what looks to be an old grandfather clock against the wall to the left. If you peer closely just through both archways (to the right and left) you’ll see glimpses of exhibit cases where the Peabody’s first floor galleries housed exhibits and displayed artifacts.
The Peabody’s mural was created by American artist, illustrator, and designer, Stuart Travis (1868-1942). Stuart Travis is well-known to the Phillips Academy Andover community. Not only can you find his work at the Peabody, but all over – the Oliver Wendell Holmes Library, Paresky Commons, the Gelb science building, and the wrought iron gate at the entrance to the Moncrieff Cochran Bird Sanctuary. Stuart Travis is buried in the Chapel Cemetery here on campus.
The mural was installed in the Peabody’s central staircase where it continues to reside today. Titled “Culture Areas of North America,” this mural reflects ideas about anthropology and archaeology in the 1930s and 1940s. The mural features many drawings of artifacts from various sites and museum collections, some drawings even link to archaeological works by long-time Peabody Director, Warren K. Moorehead (1924-1938) as well as Director, Douglas Byers (1938-1968) and Curator, Fred Johnson (1936-1968).
The mural was dated 1938, however, Stuart Travis continued to make additions through 1942. The mural was later restored in 1997 by Christy Cunningham-Adams through the generous support of the Abbot Academy Fund. If you look closely at the image, you’ll see the mural was created in sections (i.e. the very fine line located down the middle of the mural). One interesting detail you cannot see from the photo, but rather in person is the various pencil notes and markings that still remain on the mural. This leads me to believe that perhaps the mural was never quite finished or rather, some new additions planned for the mural never came to fruition.
Another fascinating find and story is this blog from our past temporary archivist, Irene Gates, who discovered six small notebooks belonging to Stuart Travis depicting illustrations and information about the Indigenous communities represented in the mural.
The Film
Mural history aside, the material image itself has quite the hazardous history (or should we say fiery?) The original image of the mural installation was made on a nitrate negative, a type of film used as a base for photographic roll film created by George Eastman in 1889. Nitrate was used for photographic and professional 35mm motion picture film until the 1950s.
What many may (or may not) know is nitrate film is highly flammable and also toxic when decomposing with age. New nitrate film could ignite with the heat of a cigarette, while decomposing nitrate film can ignite spontaneously at temperatures as low as 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Once ignited, nitrate film burns rapidly, fueled by its own oxygen, and releasing toxic fumes.
Before you jump to thoughts of flammable film spontaneously combusting in the Peabody’s collections, let me assure you THERE IS NO nitrate film currently located at the Peabody. But at one point in time there used to be nitrate film in the Peabody’s archival photograph collection, YIKES! As of July 2010, all nitrate negatives were digitized and then discarded due to the film’s potential hazard to the Peabody collections and building.
With that out of the way, let’s dive in to the history of nitrate film and how much of this history went up in smoke. We see its legacy in Alfred Hitchcock’s Sabotage – a bus operator tells a young boy he cannot bring two reels of nitrate film onboard, it’s flammable after all. Then in Quentin Taratino’s Inglourious Basterds – nitrate film’s volatile chemistry is used for his alternate history story of a plot to assassinate high-ranking officials of the Nazi party, including Hitler.
Nitrate fires were infrequent compared to the rapid spread of cinema, however, when disaster occurred at the hands of nitrate film, the results were quite devastating. One such fire occurred at Paris’s 1897 Charity Bazaar, claiming 126 lives many of which were women. In 2019, a French drama miniseries debuted on Netflix called Le Bazar de la Charité (The Bonfire of Destiny) depicting this destructive time in history.
The 1940s saw numerous fires in New York City involving nitrate film. Investigators found no evidence of negligence by personnel or the careless use of cigarettes. In fact, it appeared the nitrate film spontaneously ignited due to abnormally hot summers. Since burning nitrate produces its own oxygen, submerging the film in water is futile. In addition, the fumes given off by its ignition are highly toxic and hamper any efforts to suppress the fire. These fumes contain oxides of nitrogen which, if inhaled, can be fatal. Unfortunately, nitrate film must burn itself out.
Besides its combustive properties, nitrate is extremely fragile. Overtime, the film naturally shrinks and deteriorates, even when treated with care. Film archivists in the 1970s and 80s expressed urgency for the preservation of nitrate film using the slogan, “Nitrate Won’t Wait,” with images of the destruction of vault fires such as the 1978 vault fire at the National Archives and Records Service in Suitland, Maryland, which destroyed 12.6 million feet of historical newsreel footage and outtakes donated by Universal Pictures. As a result of this, many nitrate negatives and film have been digitized or reprinted on polyester stock (the replacement to nitrate beginning in the 1950s).
2.) Film becomes brittle; emulsion becomes adhesive and film sticks together
(At stages 1 and 2, film can be copied)
3.) Film has a noxious odor
(At stage 3 some parts of the film may be copied)
4.) Film is soft and covered with a viscous froth
5.) Film is deteriorating into a brownish acrid powder
(At stages 4 and 5, film should be immediately destroyed by local fire department)
On the other side of the argument, many believe nitrate film is a viable artifact that doesn’t have to be destroyed or hidden away. In 2015, the Nitrate Picture Show was created by the Eastman Museum to raise awareness of nitrate and preserve what remains. The Eastman Museum currently houses 24,054 reels of nitrate film.
Circling back to our mural image – I’d like to provide the current status of our Peabody mural during the pre-construction phase of our planned renovation work. We are taking protective measures to keep it safe during upcoming renovation work. Here you can see a temporary wall being placed over the mural as a protective layer.
The Peabody mural receiving a temporary wall for protection during building renovations.
The Peabody 