This season of Downton Abbey brought us one of my favorite lines ever, spoken by the offended Mrs. Patmore when accused of “frolicking” with a known prostitute: “Do I look like a frolicker?”

Now, “frolicker” is not a word one normally hears very often. I, however, have had the pleasure of reading it numerous times in the book I’m editing right now, Up North...

Left: Bathing poseurs, Gratiot Beach, 1908. Courtesy of Douglas Scott Brookes.
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The installation of Missouri History Museum's upcoming Underneath It All exhibition is well under way. Risers have been placed around the outer wall, providing the perfect height to view the "models" as they strut their stuff through the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries of women's fashion. With the "runway" constructed, exhibition curator Shannon Meyer and exhibition registrar Amy Berra transport the artifacts/costumes from the Museum's storage facility to the exhibition gallery. Read more »

“Action!” “Cut!” “That’s a wrap!” These are not phrases typically heard in a museum setting, but they were on Monday evening in the Missouri History Museum’s Mammoths and Mastodons: Titans of the Ice Age exhibition. The crew of D3D Cinema, a film production firm, transformed the exhibition into a movie set as they captured footage for their upcoming IMAX film The Ice Age. Throughout the evening, they captured images of visitors viewing the exhibition and interviewed renowned mammoth and mastodon expert Dan Fisher. Once released this summer, it will serve as the companion film to Mammoths and Mastodons, and future venues will have the option to show it alongside the exhibition. Read more »

Working on the Missouri History Museum’s ADA exhibit (The Americans with Disabilities Act: Twenty Years Later) helped me think about and then expand what I knew (or thought I knew) about accessibility. One of the commitments the exhibit team made was to provide Braille label text throughout the exhibit. Read more »

As an exhibit designer and project manager at the Missouri History Museum, I have the opportunity to do a lot of cool things in my job. November 18, 2011, was an especially memorable day at the Missouri History Museum, as we welcomed two new members to the staff—a Columbian mammoth and a short-faced bear. Both of them now grace our entrance area and Grand Hall, welcoming visitors to MHM, creating excitement about our newest exhibition—Mammoths and Mastodons: Titans of the Ice Age—and helping us to learn more about these magnificent creatures. Read more »

December 2011 marks the twentieth anniversary of the opening of the Missouri History Museum Library and Research Center (LRC). Prior to that time, all of the Museum’s artifacts were housed in the Jefferson Memorial Building.[...]

Photo at left: Decked in bunting and afloat with balloons, the Missouri Historical Society's Library and Research Center welcomes MHM members for a reception and tour on December 15, 1991. Read more »

The movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles was released almost exactly twenty-four years ago in 1987, which documents the struggles that Neal Page and Del Griffith face as they try to go home to Chicago for Thanksgiving. As weather, flight cancellations, and other disasters occur, the two are forced to adapt their original travel plans and work together in order to get home. Read more »

Working on the Woven in Time exhibit has been a new experience for me! As Curator of Domestic Life at the Missouri History Museum, I frequently handle household artifacts. For this collaboration with the Weavers’ Guild of St. Louis, which is celebrating its 85th anniversary, I’ve had the opportunity to also work with textiles and clothing.

One highlight of installing the Woven in Time exhibit was getting to meet Connie Curtiss Hilgert. Read more »

I received an internship in the Missouri History Museum's Moving Image and Sound Collections rather unexpectedly—though happily—after spending the last 14 years working in the field of film preservation and archiving. It is a unique profession, one that has offered varying degrees of training and experience while working in rooms without windows and in basements and cold storage vaults. Read more »

This November, the Missouri History Museum will host Mammoths and Mastodons: Titans of the Ice Age, which comes to us from the Field Museum in Chicago. Ever since I joined the staff of MHM in 1997, I had heard stories of a mastodon tooth in our collections, but had not come across anyone who had actually seen it, or had reason or time to search for it. Curator Sharon Smith and I decided to track it down. Sharon first checked our database for a storage location. Read more »